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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Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Sociology,

#1801

Ralph B. Taylor

#159280

Overall Influence

#1802

Sverre Holm

#96479

Overall Influence

1910 - 1996 (86 years)

Sverre Holm was a Norwegian librarian, novelist, resistance member and sociologist. He was born in Harstad. Holm published the novel Stor konsert in 1938. In 1940 he helped evacuate the Norwegian gold reserves after the German attack on Norway. He later joined the resistance movement, and was incarcerated in Møllergata 19 in Oslo from December 1944 to May 1945. He was appointed professor at the University of Oslo from 1949, the first professor of Sociology in Norway, and held this position until his retirement in 1980.

#1803

Tadeusz Piotrowski

#17220

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Tadeusz Piotrowski or Thaddeus Piotrowski is a Polish-American sociologist and author. He is a professor of sociology in the Social Science Division of the University of New Hampshire at Manchester in Manchester, New Hampshire.

#1804

Maria Márkus

#58928

Overall Influence

1936 - 2017 (81 years)

Maria Renata Márkus was a Polish sociologist and philosopher. She was educated in philosophy at the Lomonosov University in Moscow from 1952 to 1957 and was awarded her master's degree in Poland in 1957. She moved to Hungary in 1957 and became a research fellow at the Institute of Philosophy of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and was a founding member of the Institute of Sociology at the Academy. In 2010, a Festschrift was published in her honour.

#1805

Leo Srole

#101147

Overall Influence

1908 - 1993 (85 years)

Leo Srole was an American sociologist who taught at Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute . Early life and education Srole was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Lithuanian Jewish immigrants. He received his S.B. from Harvard University in 1933, after which he began studying with W. Lloyd Warner at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. He then began working with Eliot Chapple in Newburyport before transferring to the University of Chicago to complete his Ph.D. under Warner's supervision.

#1806

George A. Papandreou

#159611

Overall Influence

#1807

Scott L. Feld

#159760

Overall Influence

#1808

Werner Bergmann

#61912

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Werner Bergmann is a German sociologist. He is Professor of Sociology at the Center for Research on Antisemitism at the Technical University of Berlin. Bergmann's work focuses on sociology and history of anti-Semitism and related areas, including racism and right-wing extremism. His has published on the theory of social movements, forms of collective violence and on prejudice.

#1809

Alice Marwick

#68849

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Alice E. Marwick is a communication scholar, academic, and author, who currently works as an Associate Professor in the Communication department and Principal Researcher at the Center for Information, Technology and Public Life at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and an affiliated researcher with the Data and Society Research Institute. Marwick has written for publications such as the New York Times, and the Guardian. Her works include the examination of politics, race, social media and gender. She has been a keynote speaker for various universities throughout the United States...

#1810

Maureen Cain

#88700

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (86 years)

Maureen Cain received her bachelor's degree from London School of Economics in 1959, and she attained her PhD from the London School of Economics in 1969. After graduating from LSE, Cain became a professor.

#1811

Emerich K. Francis

#113382

Overall Influence

1906 - 1994 (88 years)

Emerich Francis was an Austrian-American sociologist. His emigration from what had become, by 1939, part of Nazi Germany, appears to have been undertaken as a result of his Jewish provenance. During the 1930s his work had a German-nationalist focus, and dealt in particular with ethnic and religious minorities. After 1945 his contributions became more theoretical and less overtly political.

#1812

Jürgen Zentek

#160167

Overall Influence

#1813

Benjamin R. Teitelbaum

#19393

Overall Influence

1983 - Present (41 years)

Benjamin Raphael Teitelbaum is an American ethnographer and political commentator. An associate professor of ethnomusicology at the University of Colorado, Boulder and former Head of Nordic Studies at the same institution. He is best known for his ethnographic research into far-right groups in Scandinavia and commentary on immigration, and is frequently cited as an expert in Scandinavian and American media.

#1814

Roksana Bahramitash

#111639

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Roksana Bahramitash is an Iranian-born Canadian sociologist, author, and professor. Her work focuses on women, employment and the informal economy in the Middle East and North Africa , as well as gender segregation in Islam, and microeconomics. In post-revolution Iran, Bahramitash was working on improving peasant women's literacy and access to economic development resources.

#1815

Elizabeth Anne Reid

#43310

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Elizabeth Anne Reid AO, FASSA, is an Australian development practitioner, feminist and academic with a distinguished career in and significant contribution to national and international public service. She founded, established and worked with a number of pioneering and specialised United Nations institutions, government agencies and non-governmental organisations. Reid was appointed the world's first advisor on women's affairs to a head of government by the Australian Labor Government of Gough Whitlam in 1973.

#1816

Allen Liska

#111248

Overall Influence

1940 - 1998 (58 years)

Allen Erwin Liska was an American sociologist and criminologist. He was a full professor at the University at Albany, SUNY from 1982 until his death in 1998, having originally joined the faculty there in 1979. From 1985 to 1988, he was the chair of the Department of Sociology there. He supervised more Ph.D. students than any other faculty member in the University at Albany, SUNY's sociology department. During his career, he also served as chair of the American Sociological Association's Section on Crime, Law, and Deviance. He was named a fellow of the American Society of Criminology in November 1998.

#1817

Yan-xiang Gao

#160526

Overall Influence

#1818

Meda Chesney–lind

#160604

Overall Influence

#1819

Peter Saunders

#118555

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Peter Gordon Saunders is an Australian social researcher. He is a professor and Director of the Social Policy Research Centre at the University of New South Wales. He was elected Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia in 1995 and in the 2022 Queen's Birthday Honours he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia.

#1820

Carol Heimer

#122421

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Carol Anne Heimer is Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University. She is known for her research on the sociology of risk and responsibility, and on regulation and ethics. Career and personal life She received her B.A. from Reed College and her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. Her dissertation advisors were Charles Bidwell, Edward Laumann, Paul Hirsch, Donald Levine, and Michael Schudson.

#1821

Georg Stauth

#127073

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Georg Stauth is a German sociologist of Islam. In his works he applies perspectives derived from Weber, Nietzsche and Foucault to an empirical and historically informed “Islamwissenschaft”. Biography Educated in Darmstadt, he went on to study ‘Islamwissenschaft’, sociology and philosophy in Frankfurt am Main and Giessen, where he took a D.Phil. His first employment as a full academic was at Alexandria University, Egypt 1969 to 1971, from where he returned to Bochum and Strasbourg. In 1974 he became a lecturer in sociology at Bielefeld where he also served a professorship . He held various fellowships in Oxford , Singapore Adelaide Geelong/Melbourne and also at universities in Egypt .

#1822

Lester W. Milbrath

Lester W. Milbrath

#84692

Overall Influence

1925 - 2007 (82 years)

Lester Walter Milbrath was an American environmentalist and professor of Political science, who taught at SUNY Buffalo from 1965 to 1991. During his academic career, he taught abroad on sabbaticals and Fulbright scholarships in Poland, Norway, Denmark, Taiwan and Australia. He also taught at the University of California, Irvine from 1992 to 1994.

#1823

Jack Levin

#86641

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Jack Levin specializes in research on murder, prejudice and hate, sociology of aging and sociology of conflict at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts. He has interviewed and corresponded with brutal killers, such as the Hillside Strangler and Charles Manson, and other violent criminals: serial killers and rapists, mass murderers, and vicious hatemongers. He is also asked by news and television reports to comment on important occurrences of homicide or hate. Along with interviews, writing material, teaching classes, and research Levin has also given talks about violence or hate ...

#1824

Katrina Roen

#130471

Overall Influence

Katrina Roen is a New Zealand psychology / sociology academic, and as of 2019 is a full professor at the University of Waikato. She was formerly a visiting researcher at the University of Oslo. Academic career After a 1998 PhD titled 'Constructing transsexuality: Discursive manoeuvres through psycho-medical, transgender, and queer texts' at the University of Canterbury, Roen took up a series of academic posts in Wellington, Lancaster, and then Oslo where she became a visiting researcher.

#1825

Owen R. Fennema

#161149

Overall Influence

#1826

Pierre Bourdieu†

#161397

Overall Influence

#1827

Thomas A. Heberlein

#161464

Overall Influence

#1828

Becky Pettit

#60897

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Elizabeth M. "Becky" Pettit is an American sociologist with expertise in demography. She has been a professor of sociology at the University of Texas-Austin, as well as an affiliate at its Population Research Center, since 2014. She is an advocate for decarceration in the United States.

#1829

Gilberto Perez

#36012

Overall Influence

1943 - 2015 (72 years)

Gilberto Perez was an American Professor of Film Studies. Perez grew up in Havana, Cuba, where he was exposed to an eclectic international mix of films. He is the son of Federico Gilberto Pérez y Castillo and Edenia Mercedes Guillermo y Marrero . He came to the United States in the early 1960s to study engineering. As an undergraduate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he became interested in theoretical physics. For Gil, theoretical physics was appealing because of its ability to explain the world around him: why a moving bicycle doesn't tip over. During the summer, he worked at American Science and Engineering in Cambridge, Massachusetts, analyzing rocket trajectories.

#1830

Jack F. Schnelle

#161797

Overall Influence

#1831

Tommy L. Wheeler

#161839

Overall Influence

#1832

Lynn Davidman

#77504

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Lynn Rita Davidman is an American sociologist. She is the distinguished professor of modern Jewish studies and professor of sociology at the University of Kansas. Early life and education Davidman was born in New York City to a Modern Orthodox Jewish family. After her mother's death when she was 13 years old, Davidman began to question her religious upbringing, which caused a divide between her and her family.

#1833

Milton Gordon

#54784

Overall Influence

1918 - 2019 (101 years)

Milton Myron Gordon was an American sociologist. He was most noted for having devised a theory on the Seven Stages of Assimilation. He was born in Gardiner, Maine. Gordon died on June 4, 2019, at the age of 100.Acculturation: newcomers adopt language, dress, and daily customs of the host society .Structural assimilation: large-scale entrance of minorities into cliques, clubs and institutions in the host society.Marital assimilation: widespread intermarriage.Identification assimilation: the minority feels bonded to the dominant culture.Attitude reception assimilation refers to the absence of p...

#1834

Helmut Staubmann

Helmut Staubmann

#126749

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Helmut Staubmann is an Austrian sociologist. He is professor for social theory and cultural sociology at the University of Innsbruck and Dean of the School of Political Science and Sociology of the University of Innsbruck. From 2013 to 2015, he served as President of the Austrian Sociological Association.

#1835

John Gagnon

#116478

Overall Influence

1931 - 2016 (85 years)

John H. Gagnon was a pioneering sociologist of human sexuality who wrote and edited 15 books and over 100 articles. He collaborated with William Simon to develop the piece he is perhaps best recognized for: "Sexual Conduct: The Social Sources of Human Sexuality" . He was Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where he taught and from 1968 to 1998. In that same time frame, he also dedicated himself to advancing the field of sociology through his research.

#1836

Wayne Osgood

#148283

Overall Influence

Donald Wayne Osgood is an American criminologist and professor emeritus of criminology and sociology at Pennsylvania State University. He has been a fellow of the American Society of Criminology since 2005, and he was the lead editor of their official journal, Criminology, from 2011 through 2017. He is also a Life Member of Clare Hall, Cambridge, since 2011.

#1837

Hans-Peter Kohler

#77005

Overall Influence

Hans-Peter Kohler is a German-American demographer and sociologist. He is the Frederick J. Warren Professor of Demography, Professor of Sociology, and co-director of the Population Aging Research Center at the University of Pennsylvania. In 2005, he received the Clifford C. Clogg Award for Early Career Achievement from the Population Association of America, and in 2018, the Association named him an honored member. He previously served as a fellow at the Centre for Advanced Study at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters from 2006 to 2007 and as president of the Society for Biodemography and Social Biology from 2007 to 2012.

#1838

Anthony Doob

#110445

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Anthony Newcomb Doob is a Canadian criminologist and professor emeritus of criminology at the Centre for Criminology & Sociolegal Studies of the University of Toronto. Early life and education Doob is the son of Leonard W. Doob, a longtime professor of psychology at Yale University who served as the director of overseas intelligence for the United States Office of War Information during World War II. Anthony Doob earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Harvard University and a PhD in psychology from Stanford University.

#1839

Leslie Sklair

#162273

Overall Influence

#1840

Manuel B. Aalbers

#162359

Overall Influence

#1841

Sigmund Grønmo

#100268

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Sigmund Harald Grønmo is a Norwegian sociologist. In his younger days he was the chairman of the Socialist Youth Association from 1968 to 1969. In 1971 he graduated in sociology from the University of Oslo.

#1842

Lynn Smith‐lovin

#162686

Overall Influence

#1843

William C. Cockerham

#162901

Overall Influence

#1844

Antonio Gramsci

#162977

Overall Influence

#1845

Ian Timothy Norton

#163015

Overall Influence

#1846

Norval Morris

#23674

Overall Influence

1923 - 2004 (81 years)

Norval Ramsden Morris was an Australian-educated United States law professor, criminologist, and advocate for criminal justice and mental health reform. He was formerly Dean of the University of Chicago Law School.

#1847

Nebojša M. Krstić

#106840

Overall Influence

1964 - 2001 (37 years)

Nebojša M. Krstić was a Serbian theologian and sociologist. Krstić was the founder and first president of the Serbian far-right youth organization Obraz , that was banned in June 2012. The name of the movement was taken from the magazine Obraz from which this movement emerged.

#1848

Jamshid Gharajedaghi

#24007

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Jamshid Gharajedaghi is an Iranian-American organizational theorist, management consultant, and Adjunct Professor of Systems thinking at Villanova University. He is known for his work of systems thinking, managing complexity, and business architecture.

#1849

Linda Shaw Finlay

#163450

Overall Influence

#1850

Charis Kubrin

#61326

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Charis Elizabeth Kubrin is an American criminologist and Professor of Criminology, Law and Society at the University of California, Irvine . Education and career After receiving her Ph.D. from the University of Washington in 2000, Kubrin taught at George Washington University for 11 years; she left George Washington University for UCI in the summer of 2011. In 2016, she and her UCI colleague Carroll Seron served as editors of a special issue of the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science about prison realignment in California.

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