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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School

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Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Sociology,

#1651

Xiongwu Fu

#146843

Overall Influence

#1652

Marie Huchzermeyer

#96839

Overall Influence

Marie Huchzermeyer is an academic and public intellectual at the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. Books Huchzermeyer, M., . Unlawful Occupation: Informal Settlements and Urban Policy in South Africa and Brazil. Africa World Press/The Red Sea Press, Trenton New Jersey.Huchzermeyer, M., . Tenement Cities: From 19th Century Berlin to 21st Century Nairobi. Africa World Press/The Red Sea Press, Trenton New Jersey.Huchzermeyer, M., .with ‘Slums’: From Informal Settlement Eradication to a Right To The City In Africa University ...

#1653

Park Gil-sung

#126203

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Gil-Sung Park is Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs, and Professor of Sociology at Korea University. Park also serves as President of the Korean Sociological Association starting in 2019. He was a former Dean of the Graduate School and of College of Liberal Arts at Korea University, and also served the board of directors of the National Research Council for Economics, Humanities, and Social Sciences in Korea.

#1654

Judith H. Hibbard

#101551

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Judith Hoffman Hibbard is the senior researcher of the Health Policy Research Group at the University of Oregon. She is also the professor emerita of the university's Department of Planning, Public Policy, and Management. Her research mostly concerns topics such as health literacy and how consumers utilize health information, and patient activation.

#1655

Allan C. Mazur

#147227

Overall Influence

#1656

Mary C Waters

#147279

Overall Influence

#1657

Damian Milton

#33340

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (51 years)

Damian Elgin Maclean Milton is a British sociologist and social psychologist who specialises in autism research and an autism rights advocate. He is a lecturer at the University of Kent as well as a consultant for the United Kingdom's National Autistic Society and has academic qualifications in sociology, psychology, philosophy, and education.

#1658

Rosaline S. Barbour

#147299

Overall Influence

#1659

Bob Hinings

#147358

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (87 years)

#1660

Ethel Shanas

#140433

Overall Influence

1914 - 2005 (91 years)

Ethel Shanas was an American scholar in the fields of Sociology of medicine and gerontology. Biography Shanas graduated in 1949 at the University of Chicago with a dissertation on the social aspects of aging, under the mentorship of Ernest Burgess and Robert J. Havighurst. She worked at the University of Chicago until 1965, as a member of the university’s Committee on Human Development, a lecturer in Sociology and a staff member of the National Opinion Research Center.

#1661

Ling-Chi Wang

#134038

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Ling-Chi Wang is a Chinese-born American civil rights activist and ethnologist. He is a civil rights activist and Professor Emeritus of Asian-American studies and ethnic studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He has been called the "Asian Martin Luther King" for his four decades of activism. Wang was born in Xiamen, Fujian, China, in 1938 and emigrated to the United States in 1957 at the age of 19.

#1662

Bente Halkier

#101885

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Bente Halkier is a Danish sociologist and academic. Since 2016, she has been Professor in Sociology at the University of Copenhagen. Career Halkier was born in 1964 and completed studied at Lancaster University in England, graduating in 1991 with an MA in contemporary sociology. Two years later, she was awarded a master's degree from Århus University. She was then a research assistant and teaching assistant at Roskilde University until she commenced doctoral studies there in 1995; her PhD was awarded in 1998 and she then spent two years as a postdoctoral researcher at Århus University and Roskilde University.

#1663

Ho-fung Hung

#115208

Overall Influence

Ho-fung Hung is an American sociologist and author. He is the Henry M. and Elizabeth P. Wiesenfeld Professor in Political Economy at Johns Hopkins University. He received a BA from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, a MA from SUNY-Binghamton, and a PhD in Sociology from Johns Hopkins University.

#1664

Thomas E. Drabek

#147733

Overall Influence

#1665

J. Jill Suitor

#110377

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Jaclynn Jill Suitor is an American Distinguished Professor of Sociology and a member of the Center on Aging and the Life Course at Purdue University. Her research focuses primarily on the relationship between parents and adult children. Since 2000, she has led the Within-Family Differences Study, a panel investigation of the predictors and consequences of parental favoritism in the middle and later years among more than 500 multigenerational families. She is an elected Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America and an elected member of the Sociological Research Association.

#1666

Stephani Hatch

#77726

Overall Influence

Stephani Louise Hatch is an American sociologist who is a psychiatric epidemiologist at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience. Her research consider urban mental health and inequality in mental health provision.

#1667

Alberto Palloni

#143732

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Alberto Palloni is an Italian-American demographer and sociologist who works for the RAND Corporation. He was previously the Samuel H. Preston Professor of Sociology, and the E.T. Young Professor of Population and International Studies, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 2006, he was the president of the Population Association of America.

#1668

Michael Savage

#93900

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Michael Savage, is a British sociologist and academic, specialising in social class. Since 2014 he has been the Martin White Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science , the post traditionally awarded to the most senior professor in the department. In addition to being Head of the Sociology Department between 2013-2016, Savage also held the position of Director of LSE's International Inequalities Institute between 2015-2020. He previously taught at the University of Manchester and the University of York.

#1669

David W. D. Dickson

#147918

Overall Influence

#1670

Emily Grundy

#97695

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Emily Marjata Dorothea Grundy, is a British demographer and academic, specialising in ageing and health inequalities. Since 2013, she has been Professor of Demography at the London School of Economics and Political Science . She was previously Professor of Demographic Gerontology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine from 2003 to 2012, and Professor of Demography at the University of Cambridge from 2012 to 2013. From October 2017, she will be Professor of Population Science and Director of the Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of Essex.

#1671

Rodney Benson

#45788

Overall Influence

Rodney Benson is an American sociologist and professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. He is also an affiliated faculty member in the NYU Department of Sociology and has been a visiting scholar or invited lecturer at universities in France , Germany , Denmark , Finland , and Norway . Before joining the NYU faculty, he was an assistant professor of international communications and sociology at the American University of Paris. He holds a PhD in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley.

#1672

Wendy D. Manning

#148143

Overall Influence

#1673

Vincent Chua

#113587

Overall Influence

Vincent Chua is a Singaporean Sociologist. He is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at the National University of Singapore. Vincent Chua received his PhD in sociology from the University of Toronto in November 2010. His research interests are in social networks and social capital, social support, education, neighbourhoods and ethnic stratification. He is interested in how institutional factors such as labour markets and education affect the job search and networking practices of people.

#1674

Dudley L. Poston Jr.

Dudley L. Poston Jr.

#80030

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Dudley L. Poston Jr. is an American academic whose areas of study include Demography, Human Ecology, and Sociology. Early and personal life Dudley L. Poston Jr. was born in San Francisco, California on 29 November 1940 to Dudley Louis Poston, Sr. and Kathryn Poston. He and his sister, Kathleen Poston Wood, were born into a large Irish Catholic family who all lived within a few blocks of each other in San Francisco, CA. Poston married Patricia Mary Joyce Poston in San Francisco, California in 1963. The Postons have two children, Nancy Kathleen Poston Espey and Dudley L. Poston III, a son-in-l...

#1675

Frauke Kreuter

#108840

Overall Influence

Frauke Kreuter is a German sociologist and statistician. She is a professor of the Joint Program in Survey Methodology of the University of Maryland, College Park and a professor in statistics and data science at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany. Her research in survey methodology includes work on sampling error and observational error.

#1676

Anna Triandafyllidou

Anna Triandafyllidou

#122453

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Anna Triandafyllidou is a sociologist. She holds the Canada Excellence Research Chair on Migration and Integration at Toronto Metropolitan University . She is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Immigrant and Refugee Studies. Her main areas of research and teaching are the governance of cultural diversity, migration, and nationalism from a European and international perspective.

#1677

James A. Holstein

#148706

Overall Influence

#1678

Julia Heiman

#34673

Overall Influence

Dr Julia R. Heiman is an American sexologist and psychologist. The sixth Director of The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction at Indiana University, she began on June 1, 2004. Dr. Heiman is also a professor in the Psychology Department at Indiana University with a joint appointment in the Psychiatry Department at the IU School of Medicine in Indianapolis.

#1679

Allan C. Kerckhoff

#148797

Overall Influence

#1680

Maurice Halbwachs

#148849

Overall Influence

#1681

Joshua Gamson

#87246

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (62 years)

Joshua Gamson is an American scholar and author. A graduate of Swarthmore College and the University of California, Berkeley, he served on the faculty of Yale University before becoming a professor of sociology at the University of San Francisco. His work has appeared in The Nation, The American Prospect, Newsday, Gender & Society, the Journal of the History of Sexuality, and Sociological Inquiry. He is the son of sociologists William and Zelda F. Gamson.

#1682

Larry L. Bumpass

#149034

Overall Influence

#1683

Pedro Augusto Medeiros Barbosa

#149363

Overall Influence

#1684

Jennifer Malat

#59233

Overall Influence

Jennifer Malat is an American sociologist. She is associate vice president for development in the Office of Development and Alumni Relations at Virginia Commonwealth University. Early life and education Malat was raised in Rochester, Minnesota and attended the University of Minnesota for her Bachelor of Science degree in sociology. She then traveled to Michigan to earn her Master's degree and PhD from the University of Michigan.

#1685

Vural Gökmen

#149676

Overall Influence

#1686

David Paternotte

#101045

Overall Influence

1982 - Present (42 years)

David Paternotte is a Belgian sociologist and gender studies academic, who is associate professor of sociology at the Université libre de Bruxelles. He is known for his research on the anti-gender movement, and has collaborated with Roman Kuhar. Their works include the book Anti-Gender Campaigns in Europe . He has also researched same-sex marriage and LGBT+ activism.

#1687

Kanai Yoshiko

#106309

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Kanai Yoshiko is Japanese academic and feminist theorist. She explored the complexities of the feminist movements in Japan and the difficulty in launching women's studies in a society bound by dualistic definitions of gender. Coining the phrase "housewife feminism", she addressed how Japanese society had attempted to appease women without addressing the underlying systemic problems that continued to foster inequality.

#1688

Melissa Steyn

#67105

Overall Influence

Melissa Steyn is a South African academic based at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Prior to moving to Johannesburg in 2011, she taught at the University of Cape Town. Life Steyn obtained her BA in 1977 from the University of South Africa, passing all her subjects, bar one, with distinction. In 1982, she completed a BA Honours in English Literature, Cum Laude, from Stellenbosch University. Having been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to pursue a master's degree in Intercultural Communication at Arizona State University in the US, she graduated in 1996 as the top graduate in Co...

#1689

Jürgen Schupp

#150003

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

#1690

Vincent N. Parrillo

#64670

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Vincent N. Parrillo is professor emeritus of sociology at William Paterson University. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Liège, Belgium , the University of Pisa, Italy , and Roehampton University, London . As a Fulbright scholar in the Czech Republic in 2000, he lectured at Charles University and Palacký University .

#1691

J.orge Chirife

#150030

Overall Influence

#1692

Magorohl Maruyama

#150241

Overall Influence

#1693

H. Douglas Goff

#150252

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

#1694

Aristide R. Zolberg

#150297

Overall Influence

#1695

Mehmet Musa Özcan

#150370

Overall Influence

#1696

Harold Mendelsohn

#99467

Overall Influence

1923 - 2019 (96 years)

Harold Mendelsohn was an American social psychologist who taught in the Mass Communications Department at the University of Denver from 1962 to 1988. During his tenure he also held a number of administrative positions in the University. He served as Chairman of the Mass Communications Department from 1970 to 1978, Dean of the Social Sciences Faculty beginning in 1984, and was Director of the University's Center for Mass Communications Research and Policy from 1962 to 1983.

#1697

James Mahmud Rice

James Mahmud Rice

#34012

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

James Mahmud Rice is an Australian sociologist in the Demography and Ageing Unit, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne. He works at the intersection of sociology, economics, and political science, focusing in particular on inequalities in the distribution of economic resources such as income and time and how private and public conventions and institutions shape these inequalities.

#1698

Nicole W. Biggart

#73377

Overall Influence

Nicole Woolsey Biggart is a Research Professor and Professor Emerita and was the Jerome J. and Elsie Suran Chair in Technology Management at the University of California, Davis from 2002 until 2010. She received her Ph.D. in economic sociology from the University of California, Berkeley with a dissertation titled The Magic Circle: A Study of Personal Staffs in the Administrations of Governors Ronald Reagan and Jerry Brown, M.A. in sociology from the University of California, Davis, and a B.A. in communication from Simmons College.

#1699

Roger Jowell

#29630

Overall Influence

1942 - 2011 (69 years)

Sir Roger Mark Jowell, CBE was a British social statistician and academic. He founded Social and Community Planning Research, now known as the National Centre for Social Research, and the Centre for Comparative Social Surveys at City University.

#1700

Heather E. Joshi

#150556

Overall Influence

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