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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List of the most influential people

#9451

Ariel Porat

#9461

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Ariel Porat is the president of Tel Aviv University , a full professor and former dean at TAU's Buchmann Faculty of Law. Until his appointment as president, he was a distinguished visiting professor of law at the University of Chicago Law School. He is a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, incumbent of the Alain Poher Chair in Private Law at TAU, and recipient of The EMET Prize for Art, Science and Culture for Legal Research.

#9452

Michael Slote

#9462

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Michael A. Slote is a professor of ethics at the University of Miami and an author of a number of books. He was previously professor of philosophy at the University of Maryland, and at Trinity College Dublin. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University.

#9453

Karim Rashid

#9463

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Karim Rashid is an Egyptian-born and Canadian raised industrial designer. His designs include luxury goods, furniture, lighting, surface design, brand identity and packaging. Time magazine has described him as the "most famous industrial designer in all the Americas" and the "Prince of Plastic". He is based in New York City, as well as Belgrade, Miami and India.

#9454

Bob Power

#9464

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Bob Power is an American two time Grammy Award–nominee and multi-platinum record producer, audio engineer, composer, arranger, performer, and music educator. Early life Power was born in Chicago, moved to Rye, New York, then moved to St. Louis, Missouri, and attended Webster College, where he studied music theory.

#9455

Mick West

#9465

Overall Influence

Mick West is a British-American science writer, skeptical investigator, and retired video game programmer. He is the creator of the websites Contrail Science and Metabunk, and he investigates and debunks pseudoscientific claims and conspiracy theories such as chemtrails and UFOs. His first book is Escaping the Rabbit Hole: How to Debunk Conspiracy Theories Using Facts, Logic, and Respect.

#9456

Stephen J. Lukasik

Stephen J. Lukasik

#9466

Overall Influence

1931 - 2019 (88 years)

Stephen Joseph Lukasik was an American physicist who served in multiple high-level defense and scientific related positions for advancing the technologies and techniques for national defense and the detection and control of diverse types of weapons of mass destruction, especially nuclear devices. He was the second longest serving Director of DARPA - the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency – during which numerous new technologies including packet and internet protocols were developed. He was also the first chief scientist of the Federal Communications Commission where he created its Offi...

#9457

Mark Warschauer

#9467

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Mark Warschauer is a professor in the Department of Education and the Department of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine, where is also the director of the Ph.D. in Education program and founding director of the Digital Learning Lab. He is the author or editor of eight books and more than 100 scholarly papers on topics related to technology use for language and literacy development, education, and social inclusion.

#9458

Ardem Patapoutian

#9468

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Ardem Patapoutian is an Lebanese-American molecular biologist, neuroscientist, and Nobel Prize laureate of Armenian descent. He is known for his work in characterizing the PIEZO1, PIEZO2, and TRPM8 receptors that detect pressure, menthol, and temperature. Patapoutian is a neuroscience professor and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at Scripps Research in La Jolla, California. In 2021, he won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly with David Julius.

#9459

Michael Joyce

#9469

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Michael Joyce is a retired professor of English at Vassar College, New York, US. He is also an important author and critic of electronic literature. Joyce's afternoon, a story, 1987, was among the first literary works of hypertext fiction to present itself as undeniably serious literature, and experimented with the short-story form in novel ways. It was created with the then-new Storyspace software, deployed the ambiguity and dubious narrator characteristic of high modernism, along with some suspense and romance elements, in a story whose meaning could change dramatically depending on the path taken through its lexias on each reading.

#9460

Norman Pirie

#9470

Overall Influence

1907 - 1997 (90 years)

Norman Wingate Pirie FRS , was a British biochemist and virologist who, along with Frederick Bawden, discovered that a virus can be crystallized by isolating tomato bushy stunt virus in 1936. This was an important milestone in understanding DNA and RNA.

#9461

Don E. Schultz

#9471

Overall Influence

1934 - 2020 (86 years)

Don Edward Schultz was Professor Emeritus of Service at Northwestern University's Medill School. He was most notable for his research and writing on integrated marketing communications . Education and early career Schultz earned a Bachelor of Business Administration from University of Oklahoma in 1957, a master's degree in advertising from Michigan State University in 1975, and a PhD in mass media from Michigan State in 1977. Schultz began his career in publication sales and management. In 1965, he joined the firm of Tracy-Locke Advertising and Public Relations based in Dallas, Texas, where ...

#9462

Brian D. Warner

#9472

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Brian Dale Warner is an American amateur astronomer and computer programmer. In 2006 he was awarded the inaugural Chambliss Amateur Achievement Award by the American Astronomical Society. From the 1990s to 2011 Warner operated from the Palmer Divide Observatory at his home near Colorado Springs, Colorado. Since 2011 he has operated from the Palmer Divide Station at the Center for Solar System Studies in Landers, California.

#9463

Pink

#9473

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (47 years)

Alecia Beth Moore Hart , known professionally as Pink , is an American singer, songwriter and actress. During her teens, Pink was a member of the girl group Choice. Her first solo studio album, Can't Take Me Home , was certified double-platinum in the United States. The R&B-influenced album spawned two Billboard Hot 100 top-ten songs: "There You Go" and "Most Girls". Pink gained further recognition with the collaborative single "Lady Marmalade" from the Moulin Rouge! soundtrack, which topped many charts worldwide. Pink refocused her sound to pop rock with her second studio album, Missundaztood .

#9464

Mark C. Taylor

#9474

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Mark C. Taylor is a postmodern religious and cultural critic. He has published more than twenty books on theology, metaphysics, art and architecture, media, technology, economics, and postmodernity. After graduating from Wesleyan University in 1968, he received his doctorate in the study of religion from Harvard University and began teaching at Williams College in 1973. In 2007, Taylor moved from Williams College to Columbia University, where he chaired the Department of Religion until 2015.

#9465

Dennis Oppenheim

Dennis Oppenheim

#9475

Overall Influence

1938 - 2011 (73 years)

Dennis Oppenheim was an American conceptual artist, performance artist, earth artist, sculptor and photographer. Dennis Oppenheim's early artistic practice is an epistemological questioning about the nature of art, the making of art and the definition of art: a meta-art that arose when strategies of the Minimalists were expanded to focus on site and context. As well as an aesthetic agenda, the work progressed from perceptions of the physical properties of the gallery to the social and political context, largely taking the form of permanent public sculpture in the last two decades of a highly ...

#9466

Mihai Nadin

#9476

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Mihai Nadin is a scholar and researcher in electrical engineering, computer science, aesthetics, semiotics, human-computer interaction , computational design, post-industrial society, and anticipatory systems. His publications on these topics number over 200, and he has lectured throughout the world.

#9467

Mark Dery

#9477

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Mark Dery is an American writer, lecturer and cultural critic. An early observer and critic of online culture, he helped to popularize the term "culture jamming" and is generally credited with having coined the term "Afrofuturism" in his essay "Black to the Future" in the anthology Flame Wars: The Discourse of Cyberculture. He writes about media and visual culture, especially fringe elements of culture for a wide variety of publications, from Rolling Stone to BoingBoing.

#9468

Mark Knopfler

#9478

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Mark Freuder Knopfler is a British guitarist, singer, songwriter, and record producer. He was the lead guitarist, singer and songwriter of the rock band Dire Straits. He pursued a solo career after the band first dissolved in 1988. Dire Straits reunited in 1990, but dissolved again in 1995. He is now an independent solo artist.

#9469

Russell Mittermeier

Russell Mittermeier

#9479

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Russell Alan Mittermeier is a primatologist and herpetologist. He has written several books for both popular and scientist audiences, and has authored more than 300 scientific papers. Biography Russell A. Mittermeier is Chief Conservation Officer of Re:wild . He served as President of Conservation International from 1989 to 2014, then Executive Vice-Chair from 2014 to 2017. He specialises in the fields of primatology, herpetology, biodiversity and conservation of tropical forests. He has undertaken research in more than 30 countries, including Amazonia and Madagascar.

#9470

John Havlicek

#9480

Overall Influence

1940 - 2019 (79 years)

John Joseph Havlicek was an American professional basketball player who spent his entire career with the Boston Celtics of the National Basketball Association . A swingman, Havlicek played collegiate basketball for the Ohio State Buckeyes from 1959 to 1962, winning an NCAA championship in 1960. He was drafted by the Celtics in 1962 and played with the team until his retirement in 1978. A 13-time NBA All-Star, Havlicek was named to the All-NBA First Team four times and to the All-NBA Second Team four times. He was also named to the NBA All-Defensive First Team on five occasions and to the NBA All-Defensive Second Team three times.

#9471

Loren Carpenter

#9481

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Loren C. Carpenter is a computer graphics researcher and developer. Biography He was a co-founder and chief scientist of Pixar Animation Studios. He is the inventor of the Reyes rendering algorithm and is one of the authors of the PhotoRealistic RenderMan software which implements Reyes and renders all of Pixar's movies. Following Disney's acquisition of Pixar, Carpenter became a senior research scientist at Disney Research. He retired in early 2014.

#9472

Stephen Davis

#9482

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Stephen Davis is an American music journalist. Davis was born in New York City and attended Boston University. He began his career writing for the Boston Phoenix in 1970. His journalism has appeared in Rolling Stone, The New York Times, the Boston Globe and numerous other newspapers and magazines.

#9473

Mark Mattson

#9483

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Mark P. Mattson Ph.D., is an adjunct professor of neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Early life and education Mattson received his B.S. in Zoology from Iowa State University in 1979, his M.S. in Biology at University of North Texas in 1982, and his Ph.D. in Biology at the University of Iowa in 1986. He was then a postdoctoral fellow at Colorado State University.

#9474

Dariusz Jemielniak

Dariusz Jemielniak

#9484

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Dariusz Jemielniak is a professor of management at Kozminski University, faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, and vice-president of Polish Academy of Sciences.

#9475

W. Willard Wirtz

#9485

Overall Influence

1912 - 2010 (98 years)

William Willard Wirtz was a U.S. administrator, cabinet officer, attorney, and law professor. He served as the Secretary of Labor between 1962 and 1969 under the administrations of Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Wirtz was the last living member of Kennedy's cabinet.

#9476

Edna O'Brien

#9486

Overall Influence

1930 - Present (96 years)

Josephine Edna O'Brien is an Irish novelist, memoirist, playwright, poet and short-story writer. Elected to Aosdána by her fellow artists, she was honoured with the title Saoi in 2015 and the "UK and Ireland Nobel" David Cohen Prize in 2019, whilst France made her Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 2021.

#9477

Doreen Massey

#9487

Overall Influence

1944 - 2016 (72 years)

Doreen Barbara Massey was a British social scientist and geographer. She specialized in Marxist geography, feminist geography, and cultural geography, as well as other topics. She was Professor of Geography at the Open University.

#9478

Akira Endo

#9488

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (93 years)

is a Japanese biochemist whose research into the relationship between fungi and cholesterol biosynthesis led to the development of statin drugs, which are some of the best-selling pharmaceuticals in history.

#9479

Joseph Cropsey

#9489

Overall Influence

1919 - 2012 (93 years)

Joseph Cropsey was an American political philosopher and professor emeritus of political science at the University of Chicago, where he was also associate director of the John M. Olin Center for Inquiry into the Theory and Practice of Democracy.

#9480

Vanessa Feltz

#9490

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Vanessa Jane Feltz is an English television personality, broadcaster, and journalist. She has appeared on various television shows, including Vanessa , The Big Breakfast , The Vanessa Show , Celebrity Big Brother , The Wright Stuff , This Morning , and Strictly Come Dancing .

#9481

David Frost

#9491

Overall Influence

1939 - 2013 (74 years)

Sir David Paradine Frost was a British television host, journalist, comedian and writer. He rose to prominence during the satire boom in the United Kingdom when he was chosen to host the satirical programme That Was the Week That Was in 1962. His success on this show led to work as a host on American television. He became known for his television interviews with senior political figures, among them the Nixon interviews with US president Richard Nixon in 1977 which were adapted into a stage play and film. Frost interviewed all eight British prime ministers serving from 1964 to 2016, from Alec...

#9482

Martin Schwarzschild

#9492

Overall Influence

1912 - 1997 (85 years)

Martin Schwarzschild was a German-American astrophysicist. Biography Schwarzschild was born in Potsdam into a distinguished German Jewish academic family. His father was the physicist Karl Schwarzschild and his uncle the astrophysicist Robert Emden. His sister, Agathe Thornton, became a classics scholar in New Zealand.

#9483

Merieme Chadid

#9493

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Merieme Chadid is a Moroccan-French astronomer, explorer and astrophysicist. She leads international polar scientific programs and has been committed to installing a major astronomical observatory at the heart of Antarctica.

#9484

Hans-Georg Maaßen

Hans-Georg Maaßen

#9494

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Hans-Georg Maaßen is a German civil servant and lawyer. From 1 August 2012 to 8 November 2018, he served as the President of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany's domestic security agency and one of three agencies in the German Intelligence Community.

#9485

Weston La Barre

#9495

Overall Influence

1911 - 1996 (85 years)

Raoul Weston La Barre was an American anthropologist, best known for his work in ethnobotany, particularly with regard to Native-American religion, and for his application of psychiatric and psychoanalytic theories to ethnography.

#9486

Vladimir Dzhanibekov

#9496

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Vladimir Aleksandrovich Dzhanibekov is a retired Soviet Air Force Major General and a cosmonaut veteran of five orbital missions. Biography Dzhanibekov was born Vladimir Aleksandrovich Krysin in the remote area of Iskandar in what was then Bostanliq District, South Kazakhstan Region, Kazakh SSR on 13 May 1942. His family moved to Tashkent soon after his birth.

#9487

Richard N. Haass

#9497

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Richard Nathan Haass is an American diplomat. He was president of the Council on Foreign Relations from July 2003 to June 2023, prior to which he was director of policy planning for the United States Department of State and a close advisor to Secretary of State Colin Powell in the George W. Bush administration. In October 2022, Haass announced he would be departing from his position at CFR in June 2023. He was succeeded by former U.S. trade representative Michael Froman.

#9488

Sergey Lavrov

#9498

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Sergey Viktorovich Lavrov is a Russian diplomat who has served as the foreign minister of Russia since 2004. He is the longest-serving foreign minister since the Tsarist era. Lavrov served as the permanent representative of Russia to the United Nations from 1994 to 2004.

#9489

Herb Sutter

#9499

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Herb Sutter is a prominent C++ expert. He is also an author of several books on C++ and was a columnist for Dr. Dobb's Journal. Education and career Sutter was born and raised in Oakville, Ontario, and studied computer science at Canada's University of Waterloo.

#9490

Michael Brauer

#9500

Overall Influence

Michael H. Brauer is an American mix engineer. Career He received a Grammy for "Best Pop Vocal Album" for his work on John Mayer's Continuum, "Best Alternative Album" for Coldplay's Parachutes, and also "Best Rock Album" for Coldplay's Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends. He has worked with artists such as Coldplay, The Rolling Stones, Prefab Sprout, Deacon Blue, James Brown, Aerosmith, Jeff Buckley, David Byrne, Tony Bennett, Billy Joel, Rod Stewart, Paul McCartney, Ben Folds, Pet Shop Boys, Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, KT Tunstall, and Martha Wainwright.

#9491

William Deresiewicz

#9501

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

William Deresiewicz is an American author, essayist, and literary critic, who taught English at Yale University from 1998 to 2008. He is the author of A Jane Austen Education , Excellent Sheep , and The Death of the Artist .

#9492

Tim Jackson

#9502

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Tim Jackson is a British ecological economist and professor of sustainable development at the University of Surrey. He is the director of the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity , a multi-disciplinary, international research consortium which aims to understand the economic, social and political dimensions of sustainable prosperity. Tim Jackson is the author of Prosperity Without Growth and Material Concerns . In 2016, he received the Hillary Laureate for exceptional mid-career Leadership. His most recent book Post Growth—Life After Capitalism was published in March 2021 b...

#9493

Wolf Leslau

#9503

Overall Influence

1906 - 2006 (100 years)

Wolf Leslau was a scholar of Semitic languages and one of the foremost authorities on Semitic languages of Ethiopia. Youth and education Leslau was born in Krzepice, a small town near Częstochowa, Poland. When he was a child his family was very poor, and after contracting tuberculosis he usually had to keep a thermometer with him to monitor his body temperature, although the reasons for this are unknown. He was orphaned by the age of 10, and was raised by his brother, and received a yeshiva education.

#9494

Sunil Gulati

#9504

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Sunil Gulati is an American sports administrator who presided over the United States Soccer Federation from 2006 to 2018. On April 19, 2013, he was elected to a four-year term on the FIFA Council. In March 2014, he was unanimously reelected to a record third four-year term as USSF president, having been elected initially in 2006 and reelected again in 2010. Gulati is also a senior lecturer in the economics department of Columbia University. He is the former president of Kraft Soccer for the New England Revolution in Major League Soccer.

#9495

Stephen Mennell

#9505

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Stephen Mennell is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at University College Dublin. Mennell was educated at Huddersfield New College in West Yorkshire, and gained his BA in Economics in 1966 from St Catharine's College, Cambridge and his Doctorate at the University of Amsterdam. He was a Frank Knox Memorial Fellow at Harvard University. After returning from America, he taught at the University of Exeter, England, from 1967 to 1990, when he became Professor of Sociology in the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at Monash University in Australia, before returning to Europe as Professor at University College Dublin in 1993.

#9496

Ottmar Edenhofer

Ottmar Edenhofer

#9506

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Ottmar Georg Edenhofer is a German economist who is regarded as one of the world's leading experts on climate change policy, environmental and energy policy, and energy economics. His work has been heavily cited. Edenhofer currently holds the professorship of the Economics of Climate Change at the Technical University of Berlin. Together with Earth scientist Johan Rockström, economist Ottmar Edenhofer is scientific director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research , representing the interdisciplinary and solutions-oriented approach of the institute. Furthermore, he is director of the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change .

#9497

James D. McCawley

James D. McCawley

#9507

Overall Influence

1938 - 1999 (61 years)

James David McCawley was a Scottish-American linguist. Biography McCawley was born James Quillan McCawley, Jr. to Dr. Monica Bateman McCawley , a physician and surgeon, and James Quillan McCawley , a businessman. In 1939 his father and two brothers moved to Toronto and founded a roofing company, but his mother remained in Glasgow with the children until after World War II. James Sr. moved to New York City and finally Chicago, where the family joined him. It was on his arrival in America that young McCawley changed his name to James David McCawley, dropping the "Junior."

#9498

Eberhard Jüngel

#9508

Overall Influence

1934 - 2021 (87 years)

Eberhard Jüngel was a German Lutheran theologian. He was Emeritus Professor of Systematic Theology and the Philosophy of Religion at the Faculty of Protestant Theology of the University of Tübingen.

#9499

John Minford

#9509

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

John Minford is a British sinologist and literary translator. He is primarily known for his translation of Chinese classics such as 40 chapters of The Story of the Stone, The Art of War, the I Ching and the Tao Te Ching. He has also translated Louis Cha's wuxia novel The Deer and the Cauldron and a selection of Pu Songling's Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio.

#9500

Wayne Proudfoot

#9510

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Wayne Lee Proudfoot is an American scholar of religion and has written several works in that field, specializing in the philosophy of religion. Proudfoot earned the degree of Master of Theology from the Harvard Divinity School in 1969, after which he taught at the College of Liberal Arts at the Lincoln Center campus of Fordham University in midtown Manhattan.

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