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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School

Gender

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Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Sociology,

#2401

Zine Magubane

#184342

Overall Influence

Zine Magubane is a scholar whose work focuses broadly on the intersections of gender, sexuality, race, and post-colonial studies in the United States and Southern Africa. She has held professorial positions at various academic institutions in the United States and South Africa and has published several articles and books.

#2402

Androula Yiakoumetti

#73856

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Androula Yiakoumetti is a Cypriot dialectologist based at the University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on Greek language and socio-cultural factors that influence language acquisition. See also Bidialectism

#2403

Earl Smith

#175532

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Earl Smith is an American sociologist, currently the Rubin Distinguished Professor Emeritus of American Ethnic Studies at Wake Forest University, and formerly the Arthur A. Sio Distinguished Professor of Community and Diversity at Colgate University. He teaches at George Mason University.

#2404

Claire Maxwell

#144701

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (49 years)

Claire Maxwell is a sociologist. She currently holds a chair in sociology at the University of Copenhagen. Early life Maxwell was born and spent her childhood in Luxembourg. She holds German and Australian citizenship, and is fluent in English, German, French, and Danish. She attended the European School in Luxembourg, graduating from its EB programme in 1993.

#2405

Alicja Iwańska

#83375

Overall Influence

1918 - 1996 (78 years)

Alicja Iwańska was a Polish sociologist, academic and writer. Born into the landed gentry of Poland, her family were members of the intelligentsia and encouraged Iwańska to pursue her literary dreams. She began publishing poetry in 1935 in various literary journals. After her high school studies, she enrolled in philosophy courses at the University of Warsaw and went on to study for a master's degree. When World War II broke out, she joined the resistance movement and served as a courier. Involved in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising, at the end of the war she became part of the secret anti-communist opposition.

#2406

Rebecca Jordan-Young

#84472

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (61 years)

Rebecca M. Jordan-Young , is an American feminist scientist and gender studies scholar. Her research focuses on social medical science, sex, gender, sexuality, and epidemiology. She is an Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Barnard College.

#2407

Sandra Lynn Barnes

#178524

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Sandra Lynn Barnes is an American educator, author, ordained Baptist minister, and documentary filmmaker. She is the C.V. Starr Professor and Chair of the Dept. of Sociology at Brown University. From 2008-2021, she was a joint-appointed Professor of Sociology in the Department of Human and Organizational Development in Peabody College of Education and Human Development and the Divinity School at Vanderbilt University.

#2408

José Félix Tezanos

#169315

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

José Félix Tezanos Tortajada is a Spanish sociologist, politician, and professor. He serves as President of the Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas since 2018. Biography Born on 5 August 1946 in Santander, he obtained a PhD degree in Political Science and Sociology at the Complutense University of Madrid . He became a member of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party in 1973, and became linked to the guerrista faction within the party.

#2409

Raymond Mack

#169137

Overall Influence

1927 - 2011 (84 years)

Raymond Wright Mack was an American sociologist known for his work on race relations and social inequality. He was the chair of the sociology department at Northwestern University from 1959 to 1967, and co-founded the Center for Urban Affairs there in 1968. He served as the Center's director from then to 1971, as Vice President and Dean of Faculties at Northwestern from 1971 to 1974, and as provost of the university from 1974 to 1987.

#2410

Nicole Westmarland

Nicole Westmarland

#169510

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (47 years)

#2411

Shaodong Guo

#113463

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Shaodong Guo is a Chinese-American nutrition scientist, academic, and diabetes researcher. He is a professor in nutrition and medicine at the Department of Nutrition of Texas A&M University. He has been a senior editor for Journal of Endocrinology and Journal of Molecular Endocrinology.

#2412

Elmer P. Martin Jr.

#176723

Overall Influence

1946 - 2001 (55 years)

Elmer P. Martin Jr. was an African-American sociologist and museum executive. He was a professor of Social Work at Morgan State University. Prior to becoming the chairman, Martin taught sociology at the university for more than 25 years. He was also the creator of the first wax museum dedicated to black history, Great Blacks In Wax in the inner city of Baltimore. Martin and his wife Joanne opened the museum on July 9, 1983, with only four wax figures: Frederick Douglass, Mary McLeod Bethune, Harriet Tubman, and Nat Turner. They had the heads of the figures made for them, and used old department store mannequins for the bodies.

#2413

Jurema Werneck

#116592

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Jurema Werneck is the Brazilian director for Amnesty International in Brazil. She is a black feminist, physician, author, and doctor in Communication and Culture from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. She is also a board member of the Global Fund for Women. Her works include, "Estelizacao de mulheres um desafio para a bioetica?", "Saúde da população negra", "O Livro Da Saude Das Mulheres Negras", and "Black Women's Health: Our Steps Come Away".

#2414

Noel Cazenave

#136958

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Noel Anthony Cazenave is a professor of sociology at the University of Connecticut. He generated controversy when he began teaching a "White Racism" course at the University of Connecticut in the 1990s. His initial proposal for the class in fall 1995 led to some of his critics comparing him to Leonard Jeffries and Louis Farrakhan. After heated debate among University of Connecticut faculty members, the class was offered for the first time in 1996. Shirlee Taylor Haizlip found out about the class because of the controversy it had generated, and subsequently spoke to its students as a guest lecturer.

#2415

Kamala Kempadoo

#178612

Overall Influence

Kamala Kempadoo is a British-Guyanese author and sexology professor who lives in Barbados and Canada. She has written multiple books about sex work and sex trafficking and won awards from the Caribbean Studies Association and the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality for her distinguished and lifetime achievement in the sexology field.

#2416

Gautier Pirotte

Gautier Pirotte

#169195

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (51 years)

Gautier Pirotte is a Belgian sociologist, PhD holder, and professor of socio-anthropology at the University of Liège. His research focuses on development cooperation, international solidarity, and theories and organizations of civil society.

#2417

Rosalba Casas

#119403

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Rosalba Casas Guerrero is a professor of History and Socio-politics at the Montreal University in Canada. Education Casas studied sociology at the National Autonomous University of Mexico , and has a PhD in Science and Technology Policy from the University of Sussex in England.

#2418

Ellis Jones

#131411

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Ellis McNatt Jones is an American sociologist and author at College of the Holy Cross. His research has focused on ethical consumerism, corporate social responsibility, and lifestyle movements. He is best known for his research translating the social and environmental records of companies into an A to F rating system for use by consumers.

#2419

Lídia Puigvert

#183314

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Lídia Puigvert is a Colombian lecturer of sociology at the University of Barcelona. She is a feminist author known for her theoretical contributions to dialog feminism and the overcoming of gender violence. She has been published many times and co-authored Women and Social Transformation with Judith Butler and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim. Due to her relevant contributions in gender studies, she was appointed as a consultant for European research projects such as IMPACT-EV, INCLUD-ED, and WORKALÓ. She was a principal investigator in several projects and coordinated Life paths that move away or move closer to human trafficking with the purpose of sexual exploitation.

#2420

Andreas Reckwitz

#187361

Overall Influence

#2421

Lisa Houghton

#182507

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Lisa Anne Houghton is a New Zealand-based scientist, professor and head of the Department of Human Nutrition at the University of Otago. Academic career Houghton graduated from the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada with a MSc for her thesis titled "The Influence of Dietary Fiber on the Folate Status of a Group of Adolescent Females". Following graduation, she worked at Acadia University as assistant professor, at The Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto before moving to the United States to work at Abbott Laboratories in the Premature Infant Nutrition division.

#2422

Marc Mauer

#43170

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Marc Mauer is the executive director of the Sentencing Project, a group that advocates for criminal justice reform and addressing racial disparities in the United States criminal-justice system. Education Mauer received his bachelor's degree from Stony Brook University and his Master of Social Work from the University of Michigan.

#2423

Erin York Cornwell

#185711

Overall Influence

Erin York Cornwell is an American sociologist. She is associate professor of sociology at Cornell University. She earned her Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 2008, where she worked with Linda Waite, Edward Laumann, and Kathleen Cagney. She specializes in survey research methods, and has made numerous contributions to sociology of law, urban sociology, and the sociology of health.

#2424

Carolyn C. Perrucci

#182371

Overall Influence

Carolyn Cummings Perrucci is an American sociologist specializing in gender roles, family, and education, who is currently a professor of sociology at Purdue University. She joined the Purdue University College of Liberal Arts department of sociology in 1966. Perrucci headed the women's studies program from 1980 to 1981 and has published several books on the career patterns of women in STEM fields.

#2425

Yasmine Motarjemi

#93792

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Yasmine Motarjemi is a food safety specialist and whistleblower. Biography Motarjemi studied chemistry and biology at the Claude-Bernard University in Lyon and food industry techniques at the University of Montpellier, before doing PhD studies in food technology at the University of Lund. She then worked as a research assistant at the same university.

#2426

Patricia Ingraham

#105841

Overall Influence

Patricia Wallace Ingraham is founding dean of the College of Community and Public Affairs at Binghamton University and a former Distinguished Professor of Public Administration at the Maxwell School, Syracuse University.

#2427

Dennis O'Keeffe

#47502

Overall Influence

1939 - 2014 (75 years)

Dennis O'Keeffe was an English professor of social science at the University of Buckingham and editor of the Salisbury Review. He was Education and Welfare Fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs. In addition, he served on the advisory boards of both the Social Affairs Unit, and FOREST, the smoker's rights campaign. He died on 16 December 2014.

#2428

Jessica Calarco

#186628

Overall Influence

Jessica McCrory Calarco is an American sociologist who is an associate professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her research considers inequalities in education and family life. She has published three books, Negotiating Opportunities, A Field Guide to Grad School and Qualitative Literacy.

#2429

Anne Harper Anderson

#172286

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Anne Harper Anderson OBE FRSE former University of Glasgow Vice Principal and Head of the College of Social Sciences, and Gender Champion, specialising in communications including machine-human interaction. She served on the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council which allocated £800million per annum for research. She was awarded an Order of the British Empire for services to social science and elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh .

#2430

Elizabeth R. Baer

#148052

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Elizabeth R. Baer is an American academic whose work specializes in women's and Holocaust studies. She was a member of the Coordinating Council of the National Women's Studies Association from its founding in 1977 through 1979. She was appointed as the Raymond and Florence Sponberg Chair of Ethics at Gustavus Adolphus College in 2000. In 2004 and again between 2016 and 2017, she was the Ida E. King Distinguished Visiting Scholar in Holocaust studies for Stockton University in Galloway, New Jersey. She has written numerous books and articles evaluating the impact of war and conflict on women's lives.

#2431

Daria Roithmayr

#128089

Overall Influence

Daria Roithmayr is the George T. and Harriet E. Pfleger Professor of Law at the University of Southern California. She is a leading scholar on the subject of racial inequality. Education Roithmayr graduated from University of California, Los Angeles, and from the Georgetown University Law Center, magna cum laude. She clerked for Judge Marvin J. Garbis, of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland.

#2432

Tricia Rose

#187729

Overall Influence

#2433

Edward Shihadeh

#187786

Overall Influence

Edward S. Shihadeh is an American sociologist and criminologist. He is professor and chair of sociology at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. At LSU, he also coordinates the Crime and Policy Evaluation Research Group, which he co-founded with Matthew Lee in 2005. He began his academic career in mathematical demography, but later became interested in researching crime and deviance as they pertained to urban black communities. He leads a team of researchers at LSU that analyze data from the Baton Rouge Area Violence Elimination , an anti-crime initiative based on Operation Ce...

#2434

Peter W. Cookson Jr.

#157751

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Peter W. Cookson Jr. is an American sociologist, academic, and author. He is the author of twenty books on education reform, inequality, and new models of learning. His books have been widely reviewed in such publications as The New York Times Book Review, Publishers Weekly, and Kirkus Reviews.

#2435

Beverley Bryan

#80550

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Beverley Bryan is a Jamaican educationist and retired academic who was a professor of language education at the University of the West Indies in Mona. Settling in Britain with her parents in the late 1950s, she went on to become a founding member of the Brixton Black Women's Group and co-authored the 1985 book The Heart of the Race: Black Women's Lives in Britain.

#2436

Jutta Allmendinger

#187857

Overall Influence

#2437

Alf Schwarz

#179845

Overall Influence

1935 - 2015 (80 years)

Alf Schwarz was a Canadian sociologist noted for his research in Sub-Saharan Africa. After studies at the Sorbonne with Raymond Aron, Pierre Bourdieu, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roger Bastide, Georges Balandier and research assignment at Université de Dakar , he began his academic career in 1963 with a faculty position at the Institut de recherches économiques et sociales of Université Lovanium . He joined in 1966 Université Laval as professor of sociology. He founded at Laval University the first academic program in African studies in French speaking Canada. As one of the pioneers of African s...

#2438

Gavin MacKenzie

#116669

Overall Influence

1942 - 2001 (59 years)

Gavin George Newing MacKenzie was a British political scientist and sociologist. Life Gavin George Newing MacKenzie was born on 8 March 1942 in Bournemouth, where he attended the grammar school. He then studied sociology at the University of Leicester before graduating in 1964. He went to study at Brown University, where he completed a Master of Arts degree and a doctorate; supervised by Sidney Goldstein, his PhD was awarded in 1970 for his thesis "Middle-class craftsman: A test of selected aspects of the thesis of embourgeoisement in the United States". He was a lecturer in sociology at the...

#2439

Edwin Bakker

#82327

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Edwin Bakker is head of the knowledge and research department of the Netherlands Police Academy and professor of Terrorism Studies at Leiden University. Biography Bakker was born on 20 October 1967 in Leiden, in the Netherlands.

#2440

S. Barry Barnes

#187898

Overall Influence

#2441

Mary Ruggie

#58998

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Mary C. Ruggie is an American sociologist and professor at Harvard Kennedy School. Ruggie completed a B.A. in sociology , M.A. in education and Ph.D. in sociology at University of California, Berkeley. Her doctoral advisor was Philip Selznick.

#2442

Gloria Laycock

#97434

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Gloria Laycock was the founding Director of the Jill Dando Institute of Crime Science at University College London , and ran UCL's Centre for Security & Crime Science. She is an internationally renowned expert in crime prevention, and especially situational approaches which seek to design out situations which provoke crime.

#2443

Mark Harrington

#56433

Overall Influence

Mark Harrington is an HIV/AIDS researcher, a staunch activist for HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis awareness, and the co-founder and policy director of the Treatment Action Group . After graduating from Harvard University in 1983, Harrington spent time exploring and did not commit to one specific career. When the AIDS epidemic became personal for Harrington, and close friends were being infected with HIV , he decided to take action and joined the group, AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power or ACT UP. As part of the Treatment and Data Committee of ACT UP, Harrington fostered relationships with government officials associated with AIDS research.

#2444

Walter DeKeseredy

#177132

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Walter Steven DeKeseredy is the Anna Deane Carlson Endowed Chair of Social Sciences at West Virginia University, where he is also director of the Research Center on Violence and professor of sociology.

#2445

Suzanne Stiver Lie

#75931

Overall Influence

1934 - 2018 (84 years)

Suzanne Stiver Lie was an American-born Norwegian women's rights activist and professor who worked to develop Women's Studies programs in Norway, Lithuania and Estonia. Her major research emphasis was on inequality in higher education and on migrant women.

#2446

Elizabeth Currid-Halkett

#130766

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (46 years)

Elizabeth Currid-Halkett is an American academic and author. She is the James Irvine Chair of Urban and Regional Planning and Professor of Public Policy at the University of Southern California. Education Currid-Halkett received her PhD in urban planning from Columbia University. She received a Bachelor's of Arts in Creative Writing and Professional Writing and a Master's of Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University.

#2447

Patricia Snyder

#60393

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Patricia A. Snyder is an American sociologist. She is a distinguished professor and David Lawrence Jr. Endowed Chair in Early Childhood Studies at the University of Florida. Education Snyder earned her Bachelor of Science at the State University of New York at Geneseo in 1977, followed by her Master of Education at Millersville University of Pennsylvania.

#2448

David Kirk

#161083

Overall Influence

David S. Kirk is an American sociologist and professor of sociology in the Department of Sociology and Nuffield College, Oxford. Before joining the Oxford faculty in 2015, he was an associate professor in the department of sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. His research interests have included the effects of high concentrations of former prisoners in a neighborhood on their probability of reoffending, and the effects of Uber on rates of drunk driving in the United States.

#2449

Hassan Diab

#143875

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Hassan N. Diab is a Lebanese-Canadian citizen and sociologist who has been convicted in absentia of having planted the explosive that caused the 1980 Paris synagogue bombing. He has always countered the accusation by insisting he was in Lebanon, and has witnesses and evidence to prove it, at the time of the event.

#2450

David R. Harris

#149489

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

David R. Harris is an American sociologist and academic administrator. He is currently the president of Union College and chancellor of Union University. He previously served as the provost of Tufts University.

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