Search People Result | Academic Influence

Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines

Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.

Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.

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To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).

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Person Name

School

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Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Sociology,

#1051

Clive Seale

#84960

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Clive Seale is a British sociologist. He is Professor of Sociology at Brunel University. Until 2012, he was Professor of Medical Sociology in the Institute of Health Sciences Education at Queen Mary, University of London, England.

#1052

Nan Dirk de Graaf

#63794

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Nan Dirk de Graaf is a Dutch sociologist working in Nuffield College, University of Oxford. He is known for his work on social stratification, religion , political sociology, the impact of social mobility on a variety of social issues , pro-social behaviour, as well as his books.

#1053

Linda M. Williams

#48761

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Linda Meyer Williams is an American sociologist and criminologist. She is senior research scientist at Wellesley Centers for Women and director of the Justice and Gender-Based Violence Research Initiative. She is also professor emerita of criminal justice and criminology at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, where she teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on child maltreatment, research methods, and gender, race and crime. Williams has researched in the field of psychology on topics including child abuse, family violence and violence against women, and trauma and memory .

#1054

Harry Hay

#2208

Overall Influence

1912 - 2002 (90 years)

Henry "Harry" Hay Jr. was an American gay rights activist, communist, and labor advocate. He was a co-founder of the Mattachine Society, the first sustained gay rights group in the United States, as well as the Radical Faeries, a loosely affiliated gay spiritual movement.

#1055

Jacek Szmatka

#101674

Overall Influence

1950 - 2001 (51 years)

Jacek Szmatka was a Polish sociologist. Professor the Jagiellonian University, visiting professor in a number of American universities State University of New York , Stanford University , University of Washington , University of South Carolina .

#1056

Vladimir Shlapentokh

Vladimir Shlapentokh

#38398

Overall Influence

1926 - 2015 (89 years)

Vladimir Emmanuilovich Shlapentokh was a Soviet and American sociologist, historian, political scientist, and university professor, notable for his work on Soviet and Russian society and politics as well as theoretical work in sociology.

#1057

Edgardo Lander

#38690

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Edgardo Lander is a Venezuelan sociologist and left-wing intellectual. A professor emeritus of the Central University of Venezuela and fellow of the Transnational Institute, he is the author of numerous books and research articles on democracy theory, the limits of industrialization and economic growth, and left-wing movements in Latin America.

#1058

Mary Pattillo

#55682

Overall Influence

Mary Pattillo is Harold Washington Professor of Sociology and African American Studies at Northwestern University. As of 2016, she has served as director of undergraduate studies in African American studies and has been a faculty associate in Northwestern's Institute for Policy Research since 2004. She has formerly served as chair of Northwestern University's department of sociology.

#1059

C. Eric Lincoln

#28472

Overall Influence

1924 - 2000 (76 years)

Charles Eric Lincoln was an American scholar. He was the author of several books, including sociological works such as The Black Church Since Frazier and Race, Religion and the Continuing American Dilemma , as well as fiction and poetry.

#1060

Maxine Baca Zinn

#65232

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Maxine Baca Zinn , née Baca, is an American sociologist known for her work on gender, race, and ethnicity and particularly, the experience of women of color at the intersection of race, class, and gender.

#1061

Sally Macintyre

Sally Macintyre

#50481

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Dame Sarah Jane Macintyre , known as Sally Macintyre, is a British medical sociologist. She is a professor emerita at the University of Glasgow. In 1998 she was awarded an OBE for services to medical sociology, and in 2006 she was awarded a CBE for services to social science. In 2011 she was awarded a DBE for services to science. In 2013 she was one of 12 women to receive the inaugural 'Engineering and Physical Sciences' Suffrage Science award.

#1062

Michael Hechter

Michael Hechter

#44086

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Michael Hechter is an American sociologist and Foundation Professor of Political Science at Arizona State University. He is also Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Washington. Hechter first became known for his research in comparative-historical analysis. His book Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British National Development, 1536-1966 presented a social structural analysis of nationalism – in contrast to then-popular cultural explanations of the phenomenon—and was one of the first such studies to employ multivariate statistical analysis. It was deemed one of the b...

#1063

Joel Rogers

#32579

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Joel Edwards Rogers is an American academic and political activist. Currently a professor of law, political science, public affairs and sociology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, he also directs the Center on Wisconsin Strategy and its projects, including the Center for State Innovation, Mayors Innovation Project, and State Smart Transportation Initiative. Rogers is a contributing editor of The Nation.

#1064

Kalwant Bhopal

#62277

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Kalwant Bhopal is Professor of Education and Social Justice and Director of the Centre for Research in Race & Education at the University of Birmingham. Her work explores the achievements and experiences of minority ethnic groups in education with a focus on how processes of racism, exclusion and marginalisation operate in predominantly White spaces.

#1065

Steven Lubet

#35985

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Steven Lubet is a legal scholar and author. Lubet is the Edna B. and Ednyfed H. Williams Memorial Professor of Law at Northwestern University. Lubet has been noted for his commentary on controversial issues such as the appointment of scholar Steven Salaita at the University of Illinois, the controversy over the legal status of Alice Goffman's research methods in her widely acclaimed book, On the Run: Fugitive Life in an American City and support of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch's speaking at a President Donald J. Trumps hotel while cases about the Administration's travel ban and "challenging the constitutionality of payments to Mr.

#1066

Basil B. Bernstein

#107876

Overall Influence

#1067

Paul Thompson

#28168

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (89 years)

Paul Thompson is a British sociologist and oral historian. Prior to his recent retirement, he held the position of Research Professor of Sociology at the University of Essex. Thompson is regarded as a pioneer in social science research, particularly due to the development of life stories and oral history within sociology and social history.

#1068

Kari Norgaard

#25989

Overall Influence

Kari Marie Norgaard is a Professor of sociology at the University of Oregon, a post she has held since 2017. She is known for her research into Indigenous environmental justice, climate change denial and the politics of global warming.

#1069

Martin Wiedmann

#107964

Overall Influence

1984 - Present (40 years)

#1070

Cynthia Cockburn

Cynthia Cockburn

#86735

Overall Influence

1934 - 2019 (85 years)

Cynthia Cockburn was a British academic, feminist, and peace activist. Career Cockburn was a researcher in the fields of gender, war and peace-making, labour processes and trade unionism, and refugees. She was active in the international women's peace movement.

#1071

Tim Newburn

#21979

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

William Henry Timothy Newburn is an academic, specialising in criminology and policing. Career He was president of the British Society of Criminology from 2005–2008, director of the Mannheim Centre for Criminology from 2003-2008 and is currently head of the Department of Social Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science. From 1997, he was Director of the Public Policy Research Unit at Goldsmiths College and has previously worked at the Policy Studies Institute, the National Institute for Social Work, the Home Office and Leicester University.

#1072

Richard A. Berk

#108020

Overall Influence

#1073

Simon Chapman

#42661

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Simon Fenton Chapman, AO is an Australian academic and tobacco control activist. Life and career Chapman was born in Bowral, New South Wales to Margaret and Alec Chapman who had emigrated from England in 1948. He is an Emeritus Professor in Public Health at the University of Sydney. In his PhD in social medicine he examined the semiotics of cigarette advertising. He has authored 21 books and major reports, 338 papers and editorials, and 198 letters and commentaries in peer reviewed journals.

#1074

Felix Biestek

#43172

Overall Influence

1912 - 1994 (82 years)

Rev. Felix Biestek was an American priest and professor who made significant contributions to the field of social work during its period of expansion following World War II. Biestek was born in Cicero, Illinois, and graduated from Loyola University of Chicago in 1938. He was ordained in 1945. He earned a master's degree in sociology at St. Louis University and a master's degree and doctorate in social work at Catholic University of America in Washington D. C.

#1075

Paul Jorion

#10523

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Paul Jorion is by training an anthropologist, sociologist with a special interest in the cognitive sciences. He has also written seven books on capitalist economics. Paul was born and raised in Belgium, and has been a professor at the universities of Brussels, Cambridge, Paris VIII and University of California at Irvine. He was a visiting scholar of the "Human Complex Systems" Program at UCLA from 2005 to 2009. He currently lives in France, where he runs a popular blog on financial and economic matters. In 2012, the Vrije Universiteit Brussel made him holder of the newly created "Stewardshi...

#1076

Frederick B. Lindstrom

#60769

Overall Influence

1915 - 1998 (83 years)

Frederick B. Lindstrom was an American sociologist specializing in popular culture and demography who spent over four decades, starting in 1953, as professor of sociology at Arizona State University.

#1077

Gurminder K. Bhambra

#84792

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (50 years)

Gurminder K. Bhambra is a British sociologist, theorist, and public intellectual specialising in postcolonial and global historical sociology. Her current work focuses on epistemological justice and reparations. While her research primarily focuses on global historical sociology, she is also interested in the intersection of the social sciences.

#1078

Boaventura de Sousa Santos

Boaventura de Sousa Santos

#46149

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Boaventura de Sousa Santos is a sociologist, Professor emeritus at the Department of Sociology of the School of Economics of the University of Coimbra , Distinguished Legal Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School, and Director Emeritus of the Centre for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra. A Marxist, outspoken sympathizer and avowed supporter of the Bloco de Esquerda party, he is regarded as one of the most prominent Portuguese living left-wing intellectuals. In 2023, after a sexual harassment scandal, the University of Coimbra suspended his academic positions unti...

#1079

Ronald Freedman

Ronald Freedman

#48350

Overall Influence

1917 - 2007 (90 years)

Ronald Freedman was an international demographer and founder of the Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan. He led pioneering survey research on fertility in Asia. Born in Winnipeg, Canada, Freedman grew up in Waukegan, Illinois. He received a BA in history and economics from the University of Michigan in 1939, and a master's degree in sociology in 1940. At the University of Chicago he completed prelims for his PhD in sociology before joining the U.S. Army in 1942 to serve in the Air Corps Weather Service.

#1080

Jeffrey K. Olick

#89370

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Jeffrey K. Olick is an American sociologist. Currently, he is William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Sociology and History at the University of Virginia. He is also co-president of the Memory Studies Association. Olick is a major figure in cultural sociology and social theory and has made significant contributions to the interdisciplinary field of memory studies.

#1081

Hans Sebald

#63974

Overall Influence

1929 - 2002 (73 years)

Hans Sebald was Professor of Sociology at Arizona State University. Sebald taught courses in the sociology of youth and social psychology, but was perhaps best known for his work on witchcraft. He was born in Selb, Germany, but came to the United States in 1954 to attend Manchester University in Indiana, from which he received a bachelor's degree cum laude in 1958. He earned a master's degree in 1959 and a doctorate degree in 1963 from Ohio State University, and taught at Arizona State University from 1963 until 1992. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1968.

#1082

Dorothy Nelkin

#53449

Overall Influence

1933 - 2003 (70 years)

Dorothy Wolfers Nelkin was an American sociologist of science most noted for her work researching and chronicling interplay between science, technology and the general public. Her work often highlighted the ramifications of unchecked scientific advances and potential threats to privacy and civil liberties. She was the author or co-author of 26 books, including Selling Science: How the Press Covers Science and Technology, The Molecular Gaze: Art in the Genetic Age, and Body Bazaar: The Market for Human Tissue in the Biotechnology Age.

#1083

Roger Matthews

#35309

Overall Influence

1948 - 2020 (72 years)

Roger Matthews , was a British criminologist. He was a Professor of Criminology at the University of Kent, Canterbury, United Kingdom. Prior to joining the University of Kent, he was a professor of criminology at London South Bank University and Middlesex University.

#1084

Sari Hanafi

#50425

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Sari Hanafi is currently a professor of sociology at the American University of Beirut and chair of the Islamic Studies program. He is the president of the International Sociological Association and also the editor of Idafat: the Arab Journal of Sociology . In 2018, Hanafi founded "Athar", the Portal for Social impact of scientific research in/on the Arab world.

#1085

James Densley

#18015

Overall Influence

1982 - Present (42 years)

James Densley is a British-American sociologist and Professor of Criminal Justice at Metropolitan State University. He is best known as co-founder of The Violence Project and as co-author of the bestselling book, The Violence Project: How To Stop a Mass Shooting Epidemic. Densley has also published extensively on street gang issues and has been described as "among the most accomplished rising leaders of modern gang research in criminology." He was one of the top 250 most cited criminologists in the world in 2019.

#1086

Ngai-Ling Sum

#49357

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (72 years)

Ngai-Ling Sum is a British sociologist and political economist and co-director of the Cultural Political Economy Research Centre at Lancaster University. Career Her 2006 book Beyond the Regulation Approach. Putting Capitalist Economies in their Place was awarded the Gunnar Myrdal Prize awarded given by the European Association for Evolutionary Political Economy. Geografiska Annaler called the book a good introduction to the theory of Regulation Approach. Sum's contributions to the book were considered "central in pushing its boundaries to the emerging project of cultural political economy" b...

#1087

René Veenstra

#25409

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

René Veenstra is Professor of Sociology at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. He is the scientific director of the Interuniversity Center for Social Science Theory and Methodology . The ICS is a joint graduate school of the sociology departments of the University of Groningen, Utrecht University, the Radboud University Nijmegen, and the University of Amsterdam.

#1088

Tomás Moulian

#67496

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Tomás Moulian Emparanza is a Chilean political scientist and sociologist. A Guggenheim Fellow and winner of the National Prize for Humanities and Social Sciences, he is known for being a critic of the socio-economic structure of his country after the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

#1089

Charles M. Payne

Charles M. Payne

#28409

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Charles M. Payne, Jr. is an American academic whose areas of study include civil rights activism, urban education reform, social inequality, and modern African-American history. He was the Chief Education Officer for Chicago Public Schools and used to be the Frank P. Hixon Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago's School of Social Service Administration.

#1090

Georg Krücken

#53798

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Georg Krücken is a German sociologist and higher education researcher. He is director of the International Center for Higher Education Research Kassel at the University of Kassel. Early life From 1981 to 1989, Georg Krücken studied sociology, philosophy and political science at the Universities of Bielefeld and Bologna . With a scholarship from the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes he earned his PhD in 1996 at the Faculty of Sociology in Bielefeld. His dissertation focused on "Risk Transformation".

#1091

Ehsan Naraghi

#42383

Overall Influence

1926 - 2012 (86 years)

Ehsān Narāghi was an Iranian sociologist, writer and Farah Pahlavi adviser Biography During his high school he went to Dar ol-Fonoon in Tehran. Then he studied sociology in the University of Geneva and received his PhD at Sorbonne University in Paris.

#1092

Nikki Giovanni

#2004

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni Jr. is an American poet, writer, commentator, activist, and educator. One of the world's most well-known African-American poets, her work includes poetry anthologies, poetry recordings, and nonfiction essays, and covers topics ranging from race and social issues to children's literature. She has won numerous awards, including the Langston Hughes Medal and the NAACP Image Award. She has been nominated for a Grammy Award for her poetry album, The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection. Additionally, she has been named as one of Oprah Winfrey's 25 "Living Legends".

#1093

Massimiano Bucchi

Massimiano Bucchi

#36974

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Massimiano Bucchi is an Italian sociologist, writer and a scholar of the relationships among science, technology and society. Biography After graduating in sociology at the University of Trento, Italy, he pursued his studies in the United Kingdom at Sussex University and in the United States at University of Wisconsin and University of California Berkeley, receiving a doctorate in Political and Social Sciences at the European University Institute. Since 2005 he has been associate professor of Science, Technology and Society at the Faculty of Sociology, University of Trento, where since 2007 h...

#1094

John Torpey

#50896

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

John Christopher Torpey is an American academic, sociologist, and historian best known for his scholarship on the state, identity, and contemporary politics. Torpey is currently a professor of sociology and history at the Graduate Center, CUNY and director of the Graduate Center's Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies. From 2016 to 2017, Torpey served as the president of the Eastern Sociological Society.

#1095

Karen Cook

#85649

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Karen Schweers Cook is an American sociologist and the Ray Lyman Wilbur Professor of Sociology at Stanford University. In 2004 Cook received the Cooley-Mead Award for Distinguished Scholarship from the American Sociological Association. In 2007 Cook was elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for her work on social exchange theory, social networks and trust.

#1096

Robert Dingwall

#87639

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Robert William James Dingwall is a British sociologist and academic, specialising in medical sociology. He has been Professor of Sociology at Nottingham Trent University since 1990. His research is on the interdisciplinary study of law, medicine, science and technology.

#1097

Bernhard Ebbinghaus

#62907

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Bernhard Ebbinghaus is a German sociologist and comparative social policy expert at the University of Mannheim. Biography Ebbinghaus was born in 1961 in Stuttgart. He studied sociology at the University of Mannheim and was a Fulbright student at the New School for Social Research in 1984/85. Following a year at the Institut Universitaire d'Etudes Européennes in Geneva, he was a doctoral student at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy , where he wrote his Ph.D. thesis on Labour Unity in Union Diversity: Trade Unions and Social Cleavages in Western Europe, 1890-1989 . Returnin...

#1098

Claude Fischler

Claude Fischler

#36595

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Claude Fischler is a French social scientist . He is a directeur de recherche of the French National Centre for Scientific Research and heads the Institut Interdisciplinaire d'Anthropologie du Contemporain , a research unit of the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, in Paris.

#1099

Chua Beng Huat

#28872

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Chua Beng Huat is a Singaporean sociologist. He is currently Professor Emeritus in the Department of Sociology, Faculty of Arts and Social Science at the National University of Singapore, and concurrently serving as a faculty member at the Yale-NUS College. "He has previously served as Provost Chair Professor, Faculty of Arts and Social Science , Research Leader, Cultural Studies in Asia Research Cluster, Asia Research Institute ; Convenor Cultural Studies Programmes and Head, the Department of Sociology , National University of Singapore".

#1100

Olivier Fillieule

#70785

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Olivier Fillieule is a political scientist and sociologist. Fillieule serves as Senior Researcher at CNRS , full-time Professor at the University of Lausanne, and Director of the Institute for Political and International Studies .

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