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

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Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Sociology,

#1401

Gudmund Hernes

#62289

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Gudmund Hernes is a Norwegian professor and politician for the Labour Party. He was the state secretary to the Secretariat for Long-Term Planning 1980–1981, Minister of Education and Research and Ministry of Church and Cultural Affairs 1990, Minister of Education, Research and Church Affairs 1991-1995 and Minister of Health and Social Affairs 1995-1996 and 1996–1997.

#1402

Cecil Foster

#77992

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Cecil Foster is a Canadian novelist, essayist, journalist, Public intellectual and scholar. He is Chairman of the Department of Transnational Studies at the University of Buffalo. Early life and education Foster was born in Bridgetown, Barbados on 26 September 1954 to Fred and Doris Goddard. When Foster was two years old, his parents migrated to Britain, leaving their children with relatives. The family was extremely poor; Foster remembers a childhood where there was rarely enough to eat.

#1403

Lisa Adkins

#93667

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Lisa Adkins is a sociologist and academic. As of 2018, she holds a professorship at the University of Sydney, where she is also Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. From 2015-2019 she was a Distinguished Professor in the Academy of Finland. She has previously held professorships at the University of Manchester and Goldsmiths, University of London. She has published in the fields of economic sociology and feminist theory, most recently on the welfare state and labour markets under finance capitalism and in post-industrial societies. She is co-editor-in-chief of Australian Feminist S...

#1404

Aline Wong

#82279

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Aline Wong is a Singaporean sociologist and former politician. She was one of the first women Parliament members in Singapore, elected in 1984. She went on to have a career in both politics and education. In 2001, she retired from politics, but continued to be active in the community and in education. In 2015, she became the first woman in Singapore to hold the position of chancellor, working at SIM University.

#1405

Kathleen Cleaver

Kathleen Cleaver

#9173

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Kathleen Neal Cleaver is an American law professor and activist, known for her involvement with the Black Power movement and the Black Panther Party, a political and revolutionary. Early life Juette Kathleen Neal was born in Dallas, Texas, on May 13, 1945. Her parents were both activists and college graduates of the University of Michigan. Her father, Ernest Eugene Neal, was a sociology professor at Wiley College in Marshall, Texas, and her mother, Pearl Juette Johnson, earned a master's degree in mathematics. Three years after Cleaver was born, her father accepted a job as the director of th...

#1406

Anupam Sen

#57744

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Anupam Sen is a Bangladeshi author, sociologist, and social activist. He is currently serving as the vice-chancellor of Premier University, Chittagong. He was awarded Ekushey Padak in 2014 by the Government of Bangladesh.

#1407

Candace A. Yano

#22633

Overall Influence

Candace A. Yano is Professor and Chair at Haas School of Business's Operations and Information Technology Management Group, and Professor and former Head of Department of Industrial Engineering & Operations Research, both at University of California, Berkeley. She is also a senior technical consultant on operations management issues for Yano Accountancy Corporation .

#1408

Adam S. Weinberg

#49224

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Adam S. Weinberg is an American sociologist, academic administrator and the 20th and current president of Denison University. Previously, he was the President and CEO of World Learning and Vice President and Dean of the College at Colgate University.

#1409

S. Philip Morgan

#69874

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

S. Philip Morgan is the Alan Feduccia Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and a former Director of the Carolina Population Center. Morgan holds a master's and Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Arizona, and bachelor's in sociology from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

#1410

Stathis Damianakos

#120159

Overall Influence

1937 - 2003 (66 years)

Stathis Damianakos is considered one of the most prominent researchers in the fields of agriculture, ethnological and cultural sociology in Greece. Among his most known works are the "Sociology of Rebetiko" and "Paradosi antarsias kai laikos politismos" . Damianakos was a Marxist sociologist and was professor at the University Paris X. In 2002 he was invited as a guest professor in the University of Crete in Rethymnon. Little before he was found dead in his apartment in Paris, he had expressed his wish to continue teaching in Crete. In May 2005 a conference to his memory was held in Athens.

#1411

Diane Reay

#49271

Overall Influence

Diane Reay is a sociologist and academic, who is Professor of Education at the University of Cambridge. She is noted for her study about educational inequalities among students in state schools in the United Kingdom. She has maintained that there is a tendency to misuse the school selection practice to transform social class differences into education. For instance, she criticized the Oxbridge application process as "institutionally racist".

#1412

Neil Brenner

#125353

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Neil Brenner is an American urban theorist and academic holding the title of Lucy Flower Professor of Urban Sociology at the University of Chicago. He previously served as Professor of Urban Theory and Director of Urban Theory Lab at Harvard Graduate School of Design, and as Professor of Sociology at New York University. He has also held previous visiting appointments at National University of Singapore, University of Amsterdam, Bard College, Maynooth University, University of Bristol, and University of Urbino. He is a member of the American Sociological Association and the Association of Ame...

#1413

Gerald Robert Salancik

#128962

Overall Influence

#1414

Yasuko Muramatsu

#87978

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Yasuko Muramatsu is a Japanese development economist, author and women's rights activist. She was the president of Tokyo Gakugei University and is the president of Japan Women's Learning Foundation.

#1415

Martin Potůček

#53896

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Martin Potůček is Czech academic and journalist. Education Potůček studied philosophy, mathematics, political science, and sociology at Masaryk University in Brno. He worked as a researcher at the Department of Complex Modelling, Sportpropag, and later in the Institute of Social Medicine and Organisation of Health Services in Prague, until 1989. He received his Ph.D. in management theory in 1989 from the University of Economics, Prague. He subsequently studied at the London School of Economics, receiving an M.Sc. in European social policy in 1991, and participated in a number of professional f...

#1416

Frank Meredith Andrews

#129175

Overall Influence

#1417

W. Garry Runciman

#129225

Overall Influence

#1418

Harry F. Dahms

#51930

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Harry F. Dahms is Professor of Sociology, co-director of the Center for the Study of Social Justice and co-chair of the Committee on Social Theory at the University of Tennessee - Knoxville. Dahms also is an associate editor of Basic Income Studies and Soundings. An Interdisciplinary Journal, and was a founding member of the editorial boards of The Newfound Press , as well as of Anthem Studies in the Political Sociology of Democracy, on whose board he has remained. Since 2022, he has been a member of the AI Tennessee Initiative taskforce.

#1419

Mariann Jelinek

#78136

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Mariann Jelinek is an American organizational theorist, and Emeritus Professor of Strategy at the College of William & Mary, considered an icon for her contributions in the field of management of technology and innovation.

#1420

Percy Cohen

#90125

Overall Influence

1928 - 1999 (71 years)

Percy Saul Cohen was a South African-born British social anthropologist and sociologist. Cohen was born in Durban, South Africa, on 6 August 1928. Cohen earned his first undergraduate degree at the University of the Witwatersrand. He arrived in the United Kingdom in 1948 to enrol at the London School of Economics, where he earned a BSc degree in social anthropology. Cohen continued graduate study in the subject at the same institution until 1960. His doctoral thesis, awarded in 1962, was on Leadership and politics amongst Israeli Yemenis. Upon completing his graduate degree, Cohen served as lecturer in sociology at the University of Leicester until 1965.

#1421

Sonia Johnson

#16410

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

Sonia Ann Johnson, is an American feminist activist and writer. She was an outspoken supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment and in the late 1970s was publicly critical of the position of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints , of which she was a member, against the proposed amendment. She was eventually excommunicated from the church for her activities. She went on to publish several radical feminist books, ran for president in 1984, and become a popular feminist speaker.

#1422

Yoko Ono

#2051

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (91 years)

Yoko Ono is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, and peace activist. Her work also encompasses performance art and filmmaking. Ono grew up in Tokyo and moved to New York City in 1952 to join her family. She became involved with New York City's downtown artists scene in the early 1960s, which included the Fluxus group, and became well known in 1969 when she married English musician John Lennon of the Beatles, with whom she would subsequently record as a duo in the Plastic Ono Band. The couple used their honeymoon as a stage for public protests against the Vietnam War. She and Lenn...

#1423

Alan Warde

#129511

Overall Influence

#1424

Abdelwahab Bouhdiba

#42809

Overall Influence

1932 - 2020 (88 years)

Abdelwahab Bouhdiba was a Tunisian academic, sociologist, and Islamologist. Biography After his studies at Sadiki College in Tunis and the Lycée Janson-de-Sailly in Paris, Bouhdiba studied philosophy and literature at the Sorbonne. He earned an agrégation in philosophy in 1959. In 1972, he earned a doctorate with a thesis titled Islam et sexualité, published in 1975 under the title La sexualité en islam.

#1425

Paul Morris Hirsch

#129566

Overall Influence

#1426

Martin S. Kenney

#129575

Overall Influence

#1427

David M. Krackhardt

#129586

Overall Influence

#1428

Gani Bobi

#86737

Overall Influence

1943 - 1995 (52 years)

Gani Bobi was an Albanian philosopher and sociologist from Kosovo. He was born in Lubenić, municipality of Peć, at the time Democratic Federal Yugoslavia. He was one of the first Albanian professors of sociology and philosophy at the University of Pristina . He got a doctorate degree in sociology at the University of Belgrade Faculty of Philosophy in 1986 after finishing his studies in language and literature at the University of Pristina. He lived in Pristina. His publications have been published in five volumes called Vepra. Among his main publications were Sprovimet e modernitetit , Parado...

#1429

Isaac Ehrlich

#58017

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Isaac Ehrlich is an American economist. He has done research in the economics of crime and law enforcement and the economics of deterrence, including the death penalty and its deterrent effects. Ehrlich has served as the Chair of the Department of Economics at the State University of New York at Buffalo since 2000.

#1430

Natalie Kampen

#49523

Overall Influence

1944 - 2012 (68 years)

Natalie Kampen was an American art historian and women's studies professor. She was born Natalie Boymel on February 1, 1944 in Philadelphia to Pauline and Jules Boymel. She received her bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Pennsylvania in 1965 and 1967, respectively. She went on to attend Brown University, receiving her PhD in 1976. Her thesis analyzed depictions of Roman working women in second and third century reliefs from Ostia Antica. Boymel taught at the University of Rhode Island from 1969 to 1988. She taught women's studies and art history at Barnard College.

#1431

Martin Albrow

#129784

Overall Influence

#1432

Darren Sherkat

#71935

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (59 years)

Darren E. Sherkat is an American sociologist and professor in the department of sociology at Southern Illinois University Carbondale . Education Sherkat received his B.A. in sociology in 1987 from the University of Tulsa, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Duke University in 1989 and 1991, respectively.

#1433

Martha S. Feldman

#79534

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Martha S. Feldman is an organization theorist best known for her work on organizational routines and, particularly, routine dynamics. Other areas of research she has contributed to include inclusive management and qualitative research methods. Feldman is the Johnson Chair for Civic Governance and Public Management in the School of Social Ecology at the University of California, Irvine She has published four books as well as numerous book chapters and journal articles.

#1434

Azadeh Kian

#24570

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Azadeh Kian-Thiébaut is an Iranian-French academic, Professor of Sociology, Director of the Social Sciences department and Director of the Center for Gender and Feminist Studies at the University Paris Cité. She is included and recognized in the BBC project 100 Women.

#1435

Robert Fine

#32963

Overall Influence

1945 - 2018 (73 years)

Robert Fine was a British sociologist. He was a leading European scholar on the history of social and political thought, cosmopolitan social theory, the social theory of Karl Marx and Hannah Arendt, the Holocaust and contemporary antisemitism, crimes against humanity and human rights. He was a Professor Emeritus at Warwick University. He died on 9 June 2018.

#1436

Ramesh Srinivasan

Ramesh Srinivasan

#56260

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (48 years)

Ramesh Srinivasan is a professor of Information Studies. Professional life Ramesh Srinivasan is a professor of Information Studies in the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies Graduate Program at the University of California, Los Angeles. He has a Bachelor's degree in Engineering from Stanford, a Masters degree in Science from the MIT Media Laboratory, and PhD from Harvard. Srinivasan is the founder of the research group Digital Cultures Lab, a UC-wide research group focused on technological advances and their impacts on various sectors.

#1437

Amparo Chiralt

#130028

Overall Influence

#1438

Jeffery Sobal

#130108

Overall Influence

#1439

Judith Astelarra

#116225

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Judith Astelarra Bonomi is an Argentine sociologist based in Spain where she has specialized in gender studies. In Chile, she contributed to work on agricultural reform in collaboration with the Inter-American Institute of Agricultural Sciences. In 1977, she was appointed Professor of Sociology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona where from 1992, as founder and coordinator of the Seminario de Estudios de la Mujer , she introduced gender studies in Spain. She later served at the university as Dean of the Faculty of Political Science and Sociology. Since the late 1970s, she has published...

#1440

Adrian Favell

#104046

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Adrian Favell is chair in Sociology and Social Theory at the University of Leeds and chercheur associé of the Centre for European Studies at Sciences Po, Paris. He is also a Professorial Academic Associate of the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures and serves as an associate editor of Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies and on the editorial committee of Journal of Common Market Studies.

#1441

Thomas A. LaVeist

#45611

Overall Influence

Thomas A. LaVeist is dean and Weatherhead Presidential Chair at the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. He was previously chairman of the Department of Health Policy and Management at the George Washington University, Milken Institute School of Public Health. He focuses mainly on the development of policy and interventions to address race disparities in the health field.

#1442

Gëzim Alpion

#80853

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Gëzim Alpion is an Albanian academic and civil activist. He is currently based in the Department of Sociology at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. Education and career Alpion earned a B.A. from Cairo University in 1989 and a PhD from Durham University, United Kingdom in 1997.

#1443

Nonie Darwish

#17649

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Nonie Darwish is an Egyptian-American writer, founder of Arabs for Israel movement, and is Director of Former Muslims United. Darwish is an outspoken critic of Islam. The Southern Poverty Law Center has described her as an anti-Arab and anti-Muslim activist.

#1444

Stephen Klineberg

Stephen Klineberg

#59053

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Stephen Klineberg is a demographics expert and sociologist in Houston, Texas. As a professor at Rice University, Klineberg and his students began conducting an annual survey in 1982, now called the Kinder Institute Houston Area Survey, that tracks the area's demographics and attitudes. Klineberg is also the founding director of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research, a think tank affiliated with Rice University that focuses on urban issues and challenges facing Houston, the Sun Belt and other major metro areas. Klineberg founded the institute in 2010 with a $15 million gift from philanthropis...

#1445

Hans Jürgen Krysmanski

Hans Jürgen Krysmanski

#97072

Overall Influence

1935 - 2016 (81 years)

Hans Jürgen Krysmanski was a German sociologist at the University of Münster. Krysmanski studied sociology, history, psychology and philosophy at the Free University of Berlin, the University of Graz, the University of Vienna, the University of Hamburg and the University of Münster. In 1961 he was awarded his PhD for a thesis about utopian novels of the 20th century.

#1446

Lillian B. Rubin

#35000

Overall Influence

1924 - 2014 (90 years)

Lillian Breslow Rubin was an American writer, professor, psychotherapist and sociologist. She was a distinguished professor of sociology at Queens College and also worked as a senior researcher at the Institute for the Study of Social Change at the University of California, Berkeley. Rubin was a feminist.

#1447

Ray Charles Rist

#131191

Overall Influence

#1448

Narpinder Singh

#131254

Overall Influence

#1449

Bruce J. Biddle

#131308

Overall Influence

#1450

Swasti Mitter

#52706

Overall Influence

1939 - 2016 (77 years)

Swasti Mitter was a researcher into gender and development. She held posts as Professor of Gender and Technology at the University of Brighton, and as a deputy director of the UNU Institute of New Technologies at the University of Maastricht . Her main area of research involved exploring the ways Information Technologies have influenced employment patterns for women in less developed countries.

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