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 …
List of the most influential people
#51
Thomas Trueblood
1856 - 1951 (95 years)
Thomas Clarkson Trueblood was an American professor of elocution and oratory and the first coach of the University of Michigan golf and debate teams. He was affiliated with the University of Michigan for 67 years from 1884 to 1951, and was a nationally known writer and speaker on oratory and debate. He founded UM's Department of Elocution and Oratory as well as the campus debate program. He became the subject of national media attention in 1903 when the Chicago Tribune ran an article stating that he was offering a new "course in love making." His golf teams won two NCAA National Championships and five Big Ten Conference championships.
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Warder Clyde Allee
1885 - 1955 (70 years)
Warder Clyde Allee was an American ecologist. He is recognized to be one of the great pioneers of American ecology. As an accomplished zoologist and ecologist, Allee was best known and recognized for his research on social behavior, aggregations and distributions of animals in aquatic as well as terrestrial environments. Allee attended Earlham College and upon his graduation in 1908, pursued advanced studies at the University of Chicago where he received his PhD and graduated summa cum laude in 1912. Allee's most significant research occurred during his time at the University of Chicago and at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole in Massachusetts.
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Harold Urey
1893 - 1981 (88 years)
Harold Clayton Urey was an American physical chemist whose pioneering work on isotopes earned him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1934 for the discovery of deuterium. He played a significant role in the development of the atom bomb, as well as contributing to theories on the development of organic life from non-living matter.
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John S. Allen
1907 - 1982 (75 years)
John Stuart Allen was an American astronomer, university professor and university president. He was a native of Indiana, and pursued a career as a professor of astronomy after receiving his bachelor's, master's and doctorate degrees. In 1953 Allen became the interim president of the University of Florida located in Gainesville, Florida, and subsequently became the founding president of the University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida.
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William Birdsall
1854 - 1909 (55 years)
William Wilfred Birdsall was a Quaker educator who was president of Swarthmore College from 1898 to 1902. Birdsall was born in Indiana in 1854, the son of Mary and Thomas Birdsall. His mother, Mary Birdsall, was a premiere suffragist, woman’s rights advocate, and editor in Indiana. She was one of the first women to address the Indiana State Legislature, demanding equal rights to men. Birdsall received a BS from Earlham College in 1873 and then went on to teach at Richmond High School in Indiana. Birdsall became the president of the Boys High School in Wilmington, Delaware. In 1880 at age 26 Birdsall married Viola Isabel McDill.
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