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 …

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List of the most influential people

#101

Ken Nakayama

#57613

Overall Influence

Ken Nakayama is an American psychologist and prior to retirement was the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. He is known for his work on prosopagnosia, an inability to recognize faces, and super recognisers, people with significantly better-than-average face recognition ability. A notable contribution is from his work on surface processing by the human visual system.

#102

Stephen Klineberg

Stephen Klineberg

#59053

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Stephen Klineberg is a demographics expert and sociologist in Houston, Texas. As a professor at Rice University, Klineberg and his students began conducting an annual survey in 1982, now called the Kinder Institute Houston Area Survey, that tracks the area's demographics and attitudes. Klineberg is also the founding director of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research, a think tank affiliated with Rice University that focuses on urban issues and challenges facing Houston, the Sun Belt and other major metro areas. Klineberg founded the institute in 2010 with a $15 million gift from philanthropis...

#103

Landrum Bolling

#59152

Overall Influence

1913 - 2018 (105 years)

Landrum Rymer Bolling was an American journalist and diplomat and a noted pacifist who was a leading expert and activist for peaceful resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict. He first worked as a war correspondent during and after World War II. He taught at Beloit College and Brown University before serving as president of Earlham College from 1958 to 1973. He was actively involved in the foreign policies of several presidential administrations, serving as an unofficial communication channel between the U.S. and the Palestinian Liberation Organization in Jimmy Carter's administration. He ...

#104

M. Powell Lawton

#60916

Overall Influence

#105

Hafsat Abiola

#63323

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (50 years)

Hafsat Olaronke Abiola-Costello, in Lagos, is a Nigerian human rights, civil rights and democracy activist, founder of the Kudirat Initiative for Democracy , which seeks to strengthen civil society and promote democracy in Nigeria. She is President of Women in Africa Initiative , international platform for the economic development and support of African women entrepreneurs. She is also one of the founders of Connected Women Leaders .

#106

Joan Gabel

#64311

Overall Influence

Joan T. A. Gabel is an American academic administrator who is the chancellor of the University of Pittsburgh. She previously served as president of the University of Minnesota. Early life and education Gabel was born in New York City and grew up in Atlanta. At age 16, Gabel entered Haverford College, where she earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy in 1988. She then worked in employee benefits for two years. She earned a J.D. degree from the University of Georgia School of Law in 1993.

#107

Douglas Koshland

#64656

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Douglas E. Koshland is a professor of molecular and cellular biology at the University of California, Berkeley. Biography Koshland is the son of Marian and Daniel E. Koshland Jr. He earned his B.A. in chemistry from Haverford College and his Ph.D. in microbiology from Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the guidance of David Botstein. He then did his postdoctoral work with Leland Hartwell at University of Washington and with Marc Kirschner at the University of California, San Francisco.

#108

Beth Willman

#65357

Overall Influence

Beth Willman is an American astronomer who is the Chief Executive Officer of the LSST Discovery Alliance, an astronomical organization notable for its support of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. She was previously the deputy director of the National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory and an associate professor of astronomy at Haverford College.

#109

William H. Harris

William H. Harris

#67434

Overall Influence

1927 - Present (97 years)

William H. Harris, is an American orthopaedic surgeon, Founder and Director Emeritus of the Massachusetts General Hospital Harris Orthopaedics Laboratory, and creator of the Advances in Arthroplasty course held annually since 1970.

#110

Philip M. Whitman

#68905

Overall Influence

Philip Martin Whitman is an American mathematician who contributed to lattice theory, particularly the theory of free lattices. Living in Pittsburgh, he attended the Haverford College, where he earned a corporation scholarship for 1936–37, and a Clementine Cope fellowship for 1937–38, and was awarded highest honors in mathematical astronomy in 1937. He was elected to the college's chapter of the Phi Beta Kappa Society. In June 1937, he was conferred the Bachelor of science degree from Haverford. According to Garrett Birkhoff, Whitman was an undergraduate Harvard student in 1937, and an outstan...

#111

E. Christian Kopff

#69836

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

E. Christian Kopff is Associate Professor of Classics and Associate Director of the Honors Program at the University of Colorado Boulder, where he has taught since 1973. He is a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome and has been awarded grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the CU Committee on Research. He has been a contributor to far-right publications.

#112

Edwin Bryant

#70874

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Edwin Francis Bryant is an American Indologist. Currently, he is professor of religions of India at Rutgers University. He published seven books and authored a number of articles on Vedic history, yoga, and the Krishna tradition. In his research engagements, he lived several years in India where he studied Sanskrit and was trained with several Indian pundits.

#113

Deborah M. Gordon

Deborah M. Gordon

#71565

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (69 years)

Deborah M. Gordon is an American biologist best known for her impactful research in the behavioral ecology of ants and her studies on the operations of ant colonies without a central control. In addition to overseeing The Gordon Lab, she is currently a Professor of Biology at Stanford University.

#114

Robert Thomas Seeley

#73978

Overall Influence

1932 - 2016 (84 years)

Robert Thomas Seeley was a mathematician who worked on pseudo differential operators and the heat equation approach to the Atiyah–Singer index theorem. Seeley did his undergraduate studies at Haverford College, and earned his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1959, under the supervision of Alberto Pedro Calderón. He taught at Harvey Mudd College and then in 1962 joined the faculty of Brandeis University. In 1972 he moved to the University of Massachusetts Boston; he retired as an emeritus professor. In 2012 he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.

#115

Sorelle Friedler

#74940

Overall Influence

Sorelle Alaina Friedler is an American computer scientist who is an Associate Professor at Haverford College. She is the co-founder Association for Computing Machinery Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency. Her research seeks to prevent discrimination in machine learning.

#116

Frank J. Popper

#75824

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Frank J. Popper is a professor at the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy of Rutgers University and the Princeton Environmental Institute at Princeton University, known for proposing the Buffalo Commons concept for the Great Plains region of the United States and coining the term locally unwanted land use .

#117

Thomas Farley

#76352

Overall Influence

Thomas A. "Tom" Farley is an American pediatrician who served as Commissioner of Health of the City of New York and Commissioner of the Philadelphia Department of Health. Early life and education The sixth of eight children of a patent lawyer father and full-time parent mother, Farley grew up in Westfield, New Jersey. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Haverford College in 1977, and later received his MD and MPH degrees from Tulane University.

#118

Brian Kuhlman

#82668

Overall Influence

Brian A. Kuhlman is an American professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the UNC School of Medicine of University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Sloan Research Fellow. Early life Kuhlman obtained Bachelor of Arts degree in chemical physics from Rice University in 1992. From 1993 to 1998 he studied under guidance of Daniel Raleigh to earn his Ph.D. in chemistry from Stony Brook University and from 1999 to 2002 he studied under guidance from David Baker to obtain Damon Runyon Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Washington.

#119

Hugh Ogden

#83345

Overall Influence

1937 - 2006 (69 years)

Hugh Ogden was an American poet and educator. Ogden was a 1959 graduate of Haverford College. Ogden received his master’s degree from New York University and a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. He taught at Michigan and then for four decades at Trinity College in Hartford. While at Trinity, Ogden co-founded the College’s creative writing program in 1968.

#120

Timothy Bresnahan

#83797

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Timothy Francis Bresnahan is an American economist who researches industrial organization. He was a founding co-editor of the Annual Review of Economics, a fellow of the Econometric Society, and recipient of a BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in 2017.

#121

Kari Nadeau

#85733

Overall Influence

Kari C. Nadeau is the Chair of the Department of Environmental Health at Harvard School of Public Health and John Rock Professor of Climate and Population Studies. She practices Allergy, Asthma, Immunology in children and adults. She has published over 400+ papers, many in the field of climate change and health. Dr. Nadeau, with a team of individuals and patients and families, has been able to help major progress and impact in the clinical fields of immunology, infection, asthma and allergy. Dr. Nadeau is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and the U.S. EPA Children’s Health Prote...

#122

Steven Drizin

#87296

Overall Influence

Steven A. Drizin is an American lawyer and academic. He is a Clinical Professor of Law at the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law in Chicago, where he has been on the faculty since 1991. At Northwestern, Drizin teaches courses on Wrongful Convictions and Juvenile Justice. He has written extensively on the topics of police interrogations and false confessions. Among the general public, Drizin is known for his ongoing representation of Brendan Dassey, one of the protagonists in the Netflix documentary series, Making a Murderer.

#123

Mark Dyer

#90524

Overall Influence

1930 - 2014 (84 years)

James Michael Mark Dyer was bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Bethlehem from 1982 to 1995. Early life Dyer was born on June 7, 1930, in Manchester, New Hampshire, the son of James M. Dyer and Anna Mahoney, both of Irish descent. He was baptised as a Roman Catholic in the Church of St Anne in Manchester, New Hampshire, on June 21, 1930. He was educated at St Joseph's Cathedral High School and graduated in 1948. During the Korean War, he served in the US Navy. He was discharged on November 18, 1954, and studied at the American College of the University of Louvain in Belgium, where he studied contemporary philosophy between 1957 and 1959.

#124

Ariel G. Loewy

#92247

Overall Influence

1925 - 2001 (76 years)

Ariel Gideon Loewy was a biochemist and cell biologist who spent most of his career on the faculty at Haverford College in Haverford, Pennsylvania and was an adjunct professor at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine at the time of his death in 2001. Loewy was widely recognized for his research on the biochemistry of blood clotting and his identification of Factor XIII, an enzyme involved in the clotting pathway. He also played a major role in the development of the molecular biology and biochemistry curricula at Haverford.

#125

Hester A. Davis

Hester A. Davis

#92507

Overall Influence

1930 - 2014 (84 years)

Hester A. Davis was an American archaeologist. Arkansas' first State Archaeologist, she was instrumental in creating national public policy and conservancy standards for cultural preservation as well as developing professional and ethical standards for archaeologists. She was the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including two distinguished service awards and induction into the Arkansas Women's Hall of Fame.

#126

Frank Furstenberg

Frank Furstenberg

#94373

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Frank Folke Furstenberg Jr. is the Zellerbach Family Professor of Sociology, Emeritus, at the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on the family in the context of disadvantaged urban neighborhoods and adolescent sexual behavior. Furstenberg has written extensively on social change, transition to adulthood, divorce, remarriage and intergenerational relations. Furstenberg is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and American Academy of Political and Social Science.

#127

Suzanne Amador Kane

#95262

Overall Influence

Suzanne Amador Kane is a physicist and Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Haverford College. She is well known for her work utilizing video to understand the behavior of various species of birds. Education and early career Kane received her Bachelor of Science degree in physics in 1982 from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She then attended Harvard University for her Master of Science degree and her PhD. There she worked in the laboratory of applied physicist Peter Pershan. Her thesis, entitled Optical and X-Ray Studies of Critical Phenomena in Thin Liquid Crystal Films and published ...

#128

Karen Masters

#95758

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (45 years)

Karen Masters is an Astrophysicist and Associate Professor of Astrophysics in Haverford College, Pennsylvania exploring galaxy formation. She is also the project scientist for the citizen science project Galaxy Zoo, and uses the classifications to study the evolution of galaxies.

#129

Thomas Spray

#96274

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Thomas L. Spray was Chief of the Division of Cardiothoracic Surgery and the Mortimer J. Buckley Jr. MD Endowed Chair in Cardiac Surgery at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and Professor of Surgery at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He retired in 2018.

#130

Anya Krugovoy Silver

#100948

Overall Influence

1968 - 2018 (50 years)

Anya Krugovoy Silver was an American poet. She won a Guggenheim fellowship, and a Georgia Author of the Year Award. Biography Silver was born in 1968 in Media, Pennsylvania, but raised in Swarthmore, and graduated from Haverford College, and Emory University. She then became a professor at Mercer University. Her work has appeared in The Christian Century, among other publications.

#131

C. Gregg Singer

#101999

Overall Influence

1910 - 1999 (89 years)

Charles Gregg Singer was an American historian and theologian. He was born in Philadelphia, and studied at Haverford College, and the University of Pennsylvania. Singer taught at Wheaton College, Salem College, the University of Pennsylvania, Belhaven College, Catawba College, Furman University, and Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary.

#132

Tristram P. Coffin

Tristram P. Coffin

#104724

Overall Influence

1922 - 2012 (90 years)

Tristram Potter Coffin was an American folklorist and leading scholar of ballad texts in the 20th century. Coffin spent the bulk of his career at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a professor of English and a co-founder of the Folklore Department. He was the author of 20 books and more than 100 scholarly articles and reviews.

#133

Truesdell Sparhawk Brown

#104799

Overall Influence

1906 - 1992 (86 years)

Truesdell Sparhawk Brown was a classical scholar, ancient historian, and co-founder of the journal California Studies in Classical Antiquity, which became the journal Classical Antiquity. Biography Brown attended Haverford College in 1922–1923 and then transferred to Harvard University, where he received his A.B in 1928 and his M.A. in 1929. He was an instructor in ancient history at the University of Colorado from 1929 to 1932 and from 1933 to 1937 with an interruption for the academic year 1932–1933 when he studied under C. F. Lehmann-Haupt at the University of Innsbruck. Brown was an instr...

#134

Michael Freilich

#107151

Overall Influence

1954 - 2020 (66 years)

Michael H. Freilich was an American oceanographer who served as director of the NASA Earth Science division from 2006–2019. In January 2020, NASA announced that the Sentinel-6A Oceanography mission was being renamed the Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich in his honor. Freilich played a key role in establishing the international partnership behind this mission. Thomas Zurbuchen, head of NASA's Science Mission Directorate , paid tribute to him as follows:

#135

Christopher H. Schmid

#109486

Overall Influence

Christopher H. Schmid is a Professor of Biostatistics and chair of the Department of Biostatistics at the Brown University School of Public Health. Schmid was a founding member formerly Co-Director of Brown's Center for Evidence Synthesis in Health.

#136

Anne McCoy

#111572

Overall Influence

Anne Bowen McCoy is a theoretical chemist. She is the Natt-Lingafelter Professor of Chemistry at the University of Washington, and her research interests include vibrational spectroscopy, hydrogen bonding, and charge-transfer bands. She received the 2023 Jack Simons Award in Theoretical Chemistry “for her development and application of theoretical methods for analyzing the vibrational spectra & dynamics of floppy molecules and clusters.”

#137

George G. C. Parker

#114742

Overall Influence

George G. C. Parker is an American economist, currently the Dean Witter Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Stanford Graduate School of Business.

#138

Alfred Diamant

#115680

Overall Influence

1917 - 2012 (95 years)

Alfred Diamant was an Austrian-born American political scientist. His main contribution was in the field of comparative politics and comparative public administration. He was a member of the Comparative Administration Group and a co-chairperson of the Council for European Studies based at Columbia University. According to Peter Alexis Gourevitch, Diamant was both "on the Executive Committee of the Council for European Studies and the Interuniversity Center for European Studies in Montreal". Diamant's areas of expertise were "Comparative Western European Politics and Social Policy". Together...

#139

David W. Fraser

#115735

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

David W. Fraser is a researcher, educational leader and epidemiologist, working from 1971 to 1982 for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He also served as President of Swarthmore College from 1982 to 1991.

#140

Marlene Schwartz

#115805

Overall Influence

Marlene B. Schwartz is the current director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Health at the University of Connecticut. Education Schwartz grew up in Columbia, Maryland. She received her bachelor's degree from Haverford College in 1988. She then attended Yale University, where she received her master's degree in 1992, her M.Phil. in 1993, and her Ph.D. in 1996.

#141

Ashok Gangadean

#117194

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Ashok Gangadean is a Trinidadian philosopher, author and spiritual activist. He is the Margaret Gest Professor of Global Philosophy at Haverford College in Haverford, Pennsylvania and the Founder and Director of the Global Dialogue Institute.

#142

Stephon Alexander

#117389

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (53 years)

Stephon Haigh-Solomon Alexander is a theoretical physicist, cosmologist, musician and author. Personal life and education Alexander was born in Trinidad and moved to the United States when he was eight. He grew up in the Bronx, New York City and attended DeWitt Clinton High School where his physics teacher Daniel Kaplan inspired him to study physics.

#143

Kerstin Perez

#117594

Overall Influence

Kerstin Perez is an Associate Professor of Particle Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is interested in physics beyond the standard model. She leads the silicon detector program for the General AntiParticle Spectrometer and the high-energy X-ray analysis community for the NuSTAR telescope array.

#144

John C. Whitehead

#120569

Overall Influence

1922 - 2015 (93 years)

John Cunningham Whitehead was an American banker and civil servant, a board member of the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation , and, until his resignation in May 2006, chairman of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation.

#145

Richard J. Bernstein

#121226

Overall Influence

#146

Daniel Weiss

#121292

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Daniel Weiss is an American art historian who was the president and chief executive officer of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. In 2022, he announced his intention to step down from the role in June 2023 after an eight-year tenure.

#147

David J. Bottjer

#122277

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

#148

Heather Paxson

#122300

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Heather Paxson is an American cultural anthropologist and science and technology studies scholar. She is an expert on the anthropology of reproduction, and on the anthropology of food, including in particular cheese and commonplace family food practices. She is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Anthropology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

#149

William Beik

#122645

Overall Influence

1941 - 2017 (76 years)

William Humphrey Beik was an American professor of French history, specialising in early modern France. Beik's father, Paul Beik, was a professor of history at Swarthmore College who carried out research on the French Revolution, so that William was partially educated in France. William took degrees from Haverford College and Harvard University . From 1968 to 1990 he taught at Northern Illinois University, and in 1990 became Professor of French History at Emory University, retiring in 2007. His Absolutism and Society in Seventeenth-Century France received the American Historical Association's Herbert Baxter Adams Prize.

#150

Iruka Okeke

#123078

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Iruka Okeke is a Nigerian microbiologist who studies the genetics of enteric disease-causing bacteria such as E. coli. She also researches ways to improve microbiology laboratory practices in Africa. She is a fellow of the Nigerian Academy of Sciences and the African Academy of Sciences.

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