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).

Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …

See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.

Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people in Sociology,

#2551

Dennis Brutus

#15644

Overall Influence

1924 - 2009 (85 years)

Dennis Vincent Brutus was a South African activist, educator, journalist and poet best known for his campaign to have South Africa banned from the Olympic Games due to its racial policy of apartheid.

#2552

Brittany Friedman

#168806

Overall Influence

1989 - Present (35 years)

Brittany Michelle Friedman is an American sociologist focusing on criminology, racial inequality, and incarceration. She is currently Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Southern California and faculty affiliate of the Sol Price Center for Social Innovation and the Equity Research Institute. Her research intersects at the sociology of law, sociology of race, economic sociology, and criminal justice. Friedman is most known for her research on the Black Guerilla Family and the black power movement behind bars, and the financialization of the criminal legal system. She is an outspoken proponent of criminal justice reform and a frequent commentator on public media outlets.

#2553

James Jones

#60334

Overall Influence

James McCoy Jones is an African-American social psychologist and cultural diversity scholar. He is Trustees' Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Psychological and Brain Sciences and Black American Studies and Director of the Center for the Study of Diversity at the University of Delaware. He is a past president of both the Society of Experimental Social Psychology and the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues.He previously taught at Harvard University and Howard University before joining the University of Delaware. In 2011, he received the Outstanding Lifetime Contributions to Psychology Award from the American Psychological Association.

#2554

Willie Pearson Jr.

#173664

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Willie Pearson Jr. is an American sociologist, who has studied and encouraged the participation of African-Americans and other minorities, as well as women, in science. He has published several books on the experience of African-American scientists with PhDs, including major studies on chemists and engineers. Pearson has had a leading role in many activities and policy development roles in relation to the participation of minorities and women in science, including chairing the Committee on Equal Opportunities in Science and Engineering , a congressionally mandated committee at the National Science Foundation .

#2555

Debra Haffner

#110300

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Debra W. Haffner is co-founder and president emerita of the Religious Institute, Inc. A sexologist and ordained Unitarian Universalist minister, she was the endorsed community minister with the Unitarian Church in Westport, Connecticut. Haffner retired from the Religious Institute on April 30, 2016. She has been the settled minister at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Reston, Virginia since August 2016.

#2556

Itamar Even-Zohar

Itamar Even-Zohar

#42043

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

Itamar Even-Zohar is an Israeli culture researcher and professor at Tel Aviv University. Even-Zohar is a pioneer of polysystem theory and the theory of cultural repertoires. Biography Itamar Even-Zohar was born in Tel Aviv. He earned his degrees from the University of Tel Aviv and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem . He also studied in Oslo, Copenhagen and Stockholm. He has been a guest scholar at universities and research centers in Amsterdam, Paris, Philadelphia, Reykjavík, Quebec City, Louvain, Santiago de Compostela, Santander, St. John's , Barcelona and Santa Cruz, California. He has ...

#2557

Dario Fo

#84791

Overall Influence

1926 - 2016 (90 years)

Dario Luigi Angelo Fo was an Italian playwright, actor, theatre director, stage designer, songwriter, political campaigner for the Italian left wing and the recipient of the 1997 Nobel Prize in Literature. In his time he was "arguably the most widely performed contemporary playwright in world theatre". Much of his dramatic work depends on improvisation and comprises the recovery of "illegitimate" forms of theatre, such as those performed by giullari and, more famously, the ancient Italian style of commedia dell'arte.

#2558

Naika Foroutan

#47440

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (53 years)

Naika Foroutan is a German social scientist. She has been head of the research group "Young Islam-related topics in Germany" at the Humboldt-Universität Berlin since 2011; in June 2015, she was appointed professor of "integration research and social policy" by Humboldt-Universität. In addition, she is secretary of the five-member board of the German Council for Migration; since 2017 she has also been head of the German Centre for Integration and Migration Research .

#2559

Yasemin Besen–Cassino

#185415

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (46 years)

Yasemin Besen–Cassino is an American sociologist. She is a professor of sociology at Montclair State University and editor for Contemporary Sociology. Besen–Cassino is married to political scientist Dan Cassino and the two often collaborate on research projects.

#2560

Harold McGee

#4920

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Harold James McGee is an American author who writes about the chemistry and history of food science and cooking. He is best known for his seminal book On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen first published in 1984 and revised in 2004.

#2561

Anthea Hucklesby

#136667

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Anthea Hucklesby FAcSS FRSA is Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Birmingham where she holds a joint appointment in Birmingham Law School and the School of Social Policy. She was Head of the School of Social Policy at the University of Birmingham 2020–2022. She was a member of the Law School at the University of Leeds between 2003 and 2020 where she was latterly Pro-Dean for research and innovation in the Faculty of Social Sciences. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce .

#2562

James W. Dean Jr.

#88685

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

James Warren Dean Jr. is the current president of the University of New Hampshire since June 30, 2018. Dean earned his Ph.D. and master’s degrees in organizational behavior from Carnegie Mellon University, as well as a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Catholic University Of America.

#2563

Nick Foskett

#70351

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Nicholas Hedley Foskett was formerly Vice-Chancellor at Keele University in Staffordshire , a Professor of Education at the University of Southampton and Dean of the Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences.

#2564

Emma Katz

#184468

Overall Influence

Emma Katz is a UK-based domestic violence researcher. Katz has contributed to policy and popular cultural discussion on coercive control, in particular in the UK, the United States, and Australia. Policy Katz was a member of the expert advisory panel for Research England's Domestic Abuse Policy Guidance for UK Universities 2021.

#2565

John E. Ivey Jr.

#183408

Overall Influence

1919 - 1992 (73 years)

John Eli Ivey Jr. was an American educator, a proponent of regional cooperation between colleges and universities, and was best known for innovations in the use of communications technology—specifically television—in education. He was a founder of the Southern Regional Education Board, served on the 1960 panel that recommended to John F. Kennedy the creation of the Peace Corps, and designed the University of South Florida.

#2566

Stephen F. Schneck

#57504

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Stephen Frederick Schneck is an American Catholic activist. Formerly an associate professor at The Catholic University of America , where he was also the Director of CUA's Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies, he retired from the university in 2018. A public speaker and lecturer, Schneck is a frequent source of media analysis on issues involving Catholicism and public policy. He was chair of the Department of Politics from 1995 to 2007 and Acting Undergraduate Dean of the School of Arts & Sciences in 1988. From 2012 to 2013, he was appointed as the Acting Dean of the National C...

#2567

Dorien DeTombe

#110380

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Dorothea Jacqueline DeTombe is a Dutch sociologist and former academic at the Utrecht University and the Delft University of Technology, known for her contributions in the field of methodology for societal complexity.

#2568

Herschel Prins

#173755

Overall Influence

1928 - 2016 (88 years)

Herschel Albert Prins was a British professor of criminology. His career spanned over 60 years in work pertaining to forensic psychiatry, and his appointments included positions at the universities of Leeds, Loughborough, Leicester and Birmingham. His roles included HM probation inspectorate, parole board engagement, and involvement in mental health review tribunals and the mental health act commission. He worked with people with malicious activity, antisocial and disinhibited behaviour, unusual sexual deviations and people who behaved dangerously.

#2569

Priti Ramamurthy

#189906

Overall Influence

Priti Ramamurthy is an American political economist. She is currently a professor of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Washington. Her work focuses upon social reproduction and makes a feminist analysis of commodity chains.

#2570

Rita El Khayat

#76042

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Rita El Khayat also known as "Ghita". Ghita El Khayat, , is Moroccan psychiatrist, anthro-psychoanalyst, writer, and anthropologist. She studied at modern schools of Rabat and completed her graduation in the field of Psychiatry, Psychoanalyst and Medical Aerospace from Paris whereas graduation in Ergonomics and Occupational Medicine were completed from Bordeaux. She did her PhD in Anthropology of Arab World from .

#2571

Jane Duncan

#175373

Overall Influence

Jane Duncan is an academic, public intellectual and activist at the Journalism Department at the University of Johannesburg in South Africa. She works on media freedom issues and is the former director of the Freedom of Expression Institute in Johannesburg.

#2572

Divina Frau-Meigs

#60612

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Divina Frau-Meigs is a Moroccan-born sociologist of media and professor at the Sorbonne Nouvelle University Paris III in France where her areas of research include, cultural diversity, dynamic identities, human/children's rights, internet governance, media education, media matrices, media in English-speaking countries, and risky content. Her research has also included media content and risk behaviors, the reception and use of Information and communications technology, and American studies. She is the chair of "Savoir-devenir in sustainable digital development" for UNESCO and coordinator of "...

#2573

James Holstein

#191174

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

James A. Holstein is an American sociologist who is emeritus professor of sociology at Marquette University. He was the editor-in-chief of Social Problems from 2002 to 2005. External links

#2574

Ashante M. Reese

#191192

Overall Influence

Ashanté M. Reese is a writer, anthropologist, and assistant professor of African and African Diaspora at The University of Texas at Austin. She earned a bachelor’s in history with a minor in African American studies from Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. Her first book, Black Food Geographies: Race, Self-Reliance, and Food Access in Washington, D.C., takes up these themes through an ethnographic exploration of antiblackness and food access. Black Food Geographies won the 2020 Best Monograph Award from the Association for the Study of Food and Society and 2020 Margaret Mead Award jointly awarded by the American Anthropological Association and the Society for Applied Anthropology.

#2575

Stephen Spiro

#92676

Overall Influence

1939 - 2007 (68 years)

Stephen Spiro was a political activist known for his opposition against the Vietnam War and his advocacy of an ideology that opposes abortion, capital punishment, assisted suicide, and euthanasia. Opposing the Vietnam war based on the theory of Just War, he objected to being conscripted, but as the law only allowed for conscientious objection to all wars, he was convicted of avoiding conscription and given a suspended sentence of five years. He was later pardoned by President Gerald Ford.

#2576

Claire Kahane

#54268

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (89 years)

Claire Kahane is an American writer, scholar and feminist literary critic. She is Professor Emerita of English at the University at Buffalo, where she taught from 1974 to 2000. Kahane is the author of Passions of the Voice, a study of narrative and "the strategies of hysteric discourse." Scholar Christine Wiesenthal, writing in the journal Victorian Review, wrote that "the confluence of feminist, narrative, and psychoanalytic theory" in Passions of the Voice was "an innovative and provocative mix." Kahane is also the co-editor, with Charles Bernheimer, of In Dora's Case, a collection of essay...

#2577

Brian Powell

#187324

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Brian Powell is an American sociologist James H. Rudy professor of sociology at Indiana University. He is known for his works on family, education, gender, and sexuality. He has more than seven thousand citations on Google Scholar.

#2578

Dorit Geva

#190072

Overall Influence

Dorit Geva is a political sociologist specialising in political sociology, social and political theory, politics of gender and sexuality, and comparative and historical sociology. Currently, she is Professor of Sociology and Social Anthropology and was Founding Dean of undergraduate studies at Central European University between 2019 and 2022. Before her appointment as Dean, she was part of a team that created the BA in Culture, Politics and Society at CEU. She is known for her research on right-wing politics in Europe, and for her research on establishment of the US draft system and its history of racial and gender discrimination.

#2579

Benjamin Cornwell

#180791

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (46 years)

Benjamin Thomas Cornwell is an American sociologist. He is Professor and Chair of Sociology at Cornell University. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in 2007, where he studied under Edward Laumann, Linda Waite, and Jason Beckfield. He works on methods to study issues involving social inequality, the epidemic spread of disease, and collective behavior.

#2580

Lynn McDonald

#148407

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Lynn McDonald is a professor in the Faculty of Social Work and Director of the Institute for Life Course and Aging at the University of Toronto and Scientific Director of the National Initiative for the Care of the Elderly.

#2581

Ed King

#57158

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (88 years)

Ralph Edwin King Jr. , better known as Ed King, is a United Methodist minister, civil rights activist, and retired educator. He was a key figure in historic civil rights events taking place in Mississippi, including the Jackson Woolworth’s sit-in of 1963 and the Freedom Summer project in 1964. Rev. King held the position of chaplain and dean of students, 1963–1967, at Tougaloo College in Jackson, Mississippi. At this critical juncture of the civil rights movement, historian John Dittmer described King as “the most visible white activist in the Mississippi movement.”

#2582

Rob Penny

#97537

Overall Influence

1941 - 2003 (62 years)

Robert Lee "Rob" Penny was an American playwright, poet, social activist, and professor. Penny wrote more than 30 plays and 300 poems. Early life Penny was born in Opelika, Alabama, on August 6, 1941. He moved to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania's Hill District as a toddler, where he was raised. A 1957 graduate of Central Catholic High School , Penny had childhood aspirations of joining the priesthood.

#2583

David MacKenzie

#149036

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

David MacKenzie is an Australian Academic researcher. He is known for his research and development in policy contributions to homelessness, with a particular interest in young people. He is the founder of Youth Development Australia Limited, an NGO.

#2584

Norman White

#187076

Overall Influence

1953 - 2017 (64 years)

Norman Anthony White was an American criminologist who taught at Saint Louis University . Early life and education White was born on February 20, 1953, in New York City, where he grew up in public housing in upper Manhattan. He attended Marist College in Poughkeepsie, where he received a bachelor's degree and a Master of Public Administration. He went on to receive another master's degree, followed by a doctorate, from the State University of New York at Albany.

#2585

Ishak Saporta

#20146

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Ishak Saporta is a professor of business ethics at Tel Aviv University. Biography Ishak Saporta was born to parents who immigrated to Israel from Turkey. He has degrees in psychology, philosophy and labor studies. In 1995, he earned a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in labor relations and organizational behavior. Saporta is a senior lecturer in the management faculty of Tel Aviv University. Saporta is a social activist and a board member of Adva Center for equality research in Israel. He has been a member of Hakeshet Hademokratit Hamizrahit since its foundation in 1996.

#2586

E. Dale Saunders

#25526

Overall Influence

1919 - 1995 (76 years)

E. Dale Saunders was an American scholar of Romance languages and literature, Japanese Buddhism, classical Japanese literature, and East Asian civilization. Life Saunders obtained an A.B. degree from Western Reserve University in 1941 and an M.A. in Romance Philology from Harvard in 1942. He continued his studies in Japanese after joining the U.S. Naval Reserve, later earning an M.A. from Harvard in 1948 and an Doctorat de l'Université de Paris in 1953.

#2587

Julia Lawton

#191376

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Julia Lawton is a British medical sociologist. She is the current Professor of Health and Social Science at the University of Edinburgh Medical School's Usher Institute and a member of the Chief Scientist Office's Health Improvement Committee.

#2588

Sunny Sanwar

#133077

Overall Influence

1989 - Present (35 years)

Sahibzada Sanwar Azam Sunny is a Bangladeshi-born American artist, environmental activist and entrepreneur. He became fluent in multiple languages and is one of the youngest artists to have a solo exhibition at the National Art Gallery with work in permanent collection at the Liberation War Museum. He finished four years of American high school in eight months with honours and was a college senior by the age of eighteen, teaching university courses in engineering at the age of 21.

#2589

Robin H. Kelly

#191408

Overall Influence

Dr. Robin H. Kelly has studied and worked for , United States Natural Resource Ecology Laboratory. She holds a PhD in Ecology from CSU Fort Collins. Since the mid 1990′s she’d worked on nearly three dozen published research projects. Much of her focus is on grassland ecosystems, specifically shortgrass steppes, and crop rotation practices in South America.

#2590

Bianca Christel Williams

#174873

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (44 years)

Bianca Williams is an American cultural anthropologist, feminist, author and academic, whose work centers on Black Americans. Dr. Williams is an associate professor of anthropology at the Graduate Center of the . She earned her B.A., M.A., and Ph.D from Duke University. She went on to earn a graduate certificate in African and African American Studies as well. She has researched extensively the emotional labor undertaken by black women, feminist pedagogies, black feminist leadership, and emotional labor in higher education workplaces. She began teaching at the University of Colorado Boulder, w...

#2591

Thomas Keith

#190915

Overall Influence

Thomas Keith is an American filmmaker, educator, and anti-sexist activist. He received both his Masters and Ph.D. in Philosophy from Claremont Graduate University. Keith is a professor of philosophy at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona and gender studies at Claremont Graduate University. He speaks to audiences throughout the United States on issues of masculinity, gender violence, media, and popular culture.

#2592

Perri 6

#57920

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (64 years)

Perri 6 is a British social scientist. He changed his name from David Ashworth to Perri 6 in 1983. Whilst not an academic at the time, many years later he said he was amused by the notion of "6, P" appearing in academic papers.

#2593

Geoffrey Lawrence

#92861

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Geoffrey Alan Lawrence is an Australian sociologist, academic and researcher. He is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Queensland. Lawrence's primary scholarly contributions are in the areas of agri-food studies, social aspects of the environment, natural resource management, genetic engineering, and sport and leisure. He is known for his significant contribution to rural sociology and agri-food studies.

#2594

Michael G. Santos

Michael G. Santos

#39555

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (60 years)

Michael Gerard Santos is an advocate for criminal justice reform and an author of several books and courses. He teaches strategies that justice-impacted people can use to prepare for success after prison.

#2595

Lucía Dammert

#82966

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

Lucía Dammert is a Peruvian and Chilean political scientist and politician. From March 2022 to September 2022 she was chief of advisors in the government of Gabriel Boric. During the second government of Michelle Bachelet she worked as chief of advisors for minister Mahmud Aleuy.

#2596

Steve Howard

#189600

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

William Stephen Howard is an American sociologist. His studies and work focus upon social change in Africa and social movements within the Muslim world. He has written about his experiences with the Muslim community in Sudan. Howard is a professor and an associate director of graduate studies at Ohio University. He works within the School for Media Arts and Studies in the Scripps College of Communications.

#2597

Patrick Condon

#68827

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Patrick Condon is a Canadian politician, landscape architect, and professor. Education Condon has a BSc and MLA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He has worked as a community organizer in Brockton, Massachusetts and a landscape architect.

#2598

Gianluca Tognon

Gianluca Tognon

#163925

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (48 years)

Gianluca Tognon is an Italian food scientist, researcher, public health expert, author and speaker. In 2017 he has founded the consulting company The Food Scientist, which is based in Sweden. Education Gianluca Tognon has obtained a degree in Biological Sciences from the University of Pavia in 2000. The title of his dissertation was Effects of the antitumor drug Paclitaxel on human colon cancer. In 2003 he has obtained a specialist degree in Pharmacological research from Regione Lombardia . In 2005 he has completed a Medical specialty degree in Food science and human nutrition at the University of Pavia.

#2599

Laura Quilter

#69886

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Laura Quilter is a writer, lawyer, librarian, professor, and science fiction fan known for both her work on intellectual property and new media, and her long-standing archive of information on feminist science fiction.

#2600

George Martinez

#168573

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (50 years)

George Martinez, , also known as "George Rithm Martinez" and "Hon. George Martinez", is an American educator, community entrepreneur, and artist. He is a former adjunct professor of political science at Pace University and a cultural ambassador for the U.S. Department of State for the Western Hemisphere. He was elected in 2002 as the district leader in the 51st Assembly District in Sunset Park, Brooklyn and a former Assistant Director of Intergovernmental Affairs for the Office of the New York State Attorney General. He is the first hip-hop artist elected to political office in New York.

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions