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

#12401

Ursula Goodenough

Ursula Goodenough

#12412

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Ursula W. Goodenough is a Professor of Biology Emerita at Washington University in St. Louis where she engaged in research on eukaryotic algae. She authored the textbook Genetics and the best-selling book Sacred Depths of Nature and speaks regularly about religious naturalist orientation and evolution. She contributed to the NPR blog, 13.7: Cosmos & Culture, from 2009 to 2011.

#12402

Anatol Zhabotinsky

Anatol Zhabotinsky

#12413

Overall Influence

1938 - 2008 (70 years)

Anatol Markovich Zhabotinsky was a Soviet biophysicist who created a theory of the chemical clock known as Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction in the 1960s and published a comprehensive body of experimental data on chemical wave propagation and pattern formation in nonuniform media. The reaction had been discovered by Boris Pavlovich Belousov in the early 1950s. From 1991 until his death, Zhabotinsky was an adjunct professor of chemistry at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts.

#12403

Steven Tyler

#12414

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Steven Victor Tallarico , known professionally as Steven Tyler, is an American singer, best known as the lead singer of the Boston-based rock band Aerosmith, in which he also plays the keyboards, harmonica and percussion. He has been called the "Demon of Screamin'" due to his high screams and his powerful wide vocal range. He is also known for his on-stage acrobatics. During his performances, Tyler usually dresses in colorful, sometimes androgynous outfits and makeup with his trademark scarves hanging from his microphone stand.

#12404

Anita Desai

#12415

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Anita Desai , born Anita Mazumdar , is an Indian novelist and the Emerita John E. Burchard Professor of Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As a writer she has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times. She received a Sahitya Akademi Award in 1978 for her novel Fire on the Mountain, from the Sahitya Akademi, India's National Academy of Letters. She won the British Guardian Prize for The Village by the Sea . Her other works include The Peacock, Voices in the City, Fire on the Mountain and an anthology of short stories, Games at Twilight. She is on the advisory board...

#12405

Leo Ou-fan Lee

#12416

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Leo Ou-fan Lee is a Chinese commentator and author who was elected Fellow of Academia Sinica in 2002. Lee also was a professor at Chinese University of Hong Kong, Princeton University, Indiana University, University of Chicago, University of California, Los Angeles, and Harvard University.

#12406

Harold Widom

#12417

Overall Influence

1932 - 2021 (89 years)

Harold Widom was an American mathematician best known for his contributions to operator theory and random matrices. He was appointed to the Department of Mathematics at the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1968 and became professor emeritus in 1994.

#12407

John Shattuck

#12418

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

John Howard Francis Shattuck is an international legal scholar and human rights leader. He served as the fourth President and Rector of Central European University from August 2009 until July 31, 2016. He is a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, and he joined the faculty of Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in January 2017.

#12408

Michelle Perrot

Michelle Perrot

#12419

Overall Influence

1928 - Present (98 years)

Michelle Perrot is a French historian, and Professor emeritus of Contemporary History at the Paris Diderot University. She won the 2009 Prix Femina Essai. Life She has worked on the history of labor movements, and studied with Ernest Labrousse, with Michel Foucault, and with Robert Badinter.

#12409

Seymour Sarason

#12420

Overall Influence

1919 - 2010 (91 years)

Seymour Bernard Sarason was Professor of Psychology Emeritus at Yale University, where he taught from 1945 to 1989. He is the author of over forty books and over sixty articles, and he is considered to be one of the most significant American researchers in education, educational psychology, and community psychology. One primary focus of his work was on education reform in the United States. In the 1950s he and George Mandler initiated the research on test anxiety. He founded the Yale Psycho-Educational Clinic in 1961 and was one of the principal leaders in the community psychology movement. In 1974, he proposed psychological sense of community, a central concept in community psychology.

#12410

Thomas Pavel

#12421

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Thomas Pavel is a literary theorist, critic, and novelist, who currently is Emeritus professor at the University of Chicago. Biography Thomas Pavel received an MA in Linguistics from the University of Bucharest in 1962 and a Doctorat 3e cycle from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris, in 1971, after defecting to France in 1969. He taught at the University of Ottawa from 1971 to 1981, the University of Québec at Montréal from 1981 to 1986, the University of California Santa Cruz from 1986 to 1990, and Princeton University from 1990 to 1998. He was a visiting professor at...

#12411

Nigel Goldenfeld

#12422

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Nigel David Goldenfeld is a Swanlund Chair, Professor of Physics Department in the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign , the director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute for Universal Biology, and the leader of the Biocomplexity group at Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology. Goldenfeld is a co-founder of Numerix and the author of the 1993 textbook "Lectures on Phase Transitions and the Renormalization Group," a widely used graduate textbook in statistical physics.

#12412

James Eells

#12423

Overall Influence

1926 - 2007 (81 years)

James Eells was an American mathematician, who specialized in mathematical analysis. Biography Eells studied mathematics at Bowdoin College in Maine and earned his undergraduate degree in 1947. After graduation he spent one year teaching mathematics at Robert College in Istanbul and starting in 1948 was for two years an instructor at Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts. Next he undertook graduate study at Harvard University, where in 1954 he received his Ph.D under Hassler Whitney with thesis Geometric Aspects of Integration Theory.

#12413

Atul Kohli

#12424

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Atul Kohli is a professor of politics and international affairs at Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University. Education and Career Kohli was promoted to full professor in 1991, and was also appointed as David K.E. Bruce Professor of International Affairs at Princeton in 2002. Kohli is also the Editor in Chief of the journal of World Politics. In addition, he served as the Vice President of the American Political Science Association from 2009 to 2010.

#12414

John K. Lattimer

#12425

Overall Influence

1914 - 2007 (93 years)

John Kingsley Lattimer, MD was a urologist who did extensive research on the Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy assassinations, becoming the first medical specialist not affiliated with the United States government to examine the medical evidence related to Kennedy's assassination. Lattimer studied at Columbia University and became the urologist-in-chief of Presbyterian Hospital and chairman of the urology department at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University for 25 years. He wrote 375 papers helping to establish pediatric urology as a field and is credited with develop...

#12415

Hazel Henderson

#12426

Overall Influence

1933 - 2022 (89 years)

Jean Hazel Henderson was a British American futurist and environmental activist. As an autodidact in her twenties, having only a British high-school formal education, in the U.S. she gradually advanced, by virtue of groundbreaking citizen activism, into the roles of university lecturer and chair-holder, as well as that of advisor to corporations and government agencies. She authored several books including Building a Win-Win World, Beyond Globalization, Planetary Citizenship , and Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy.

#12416

Fernando González

#12427

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (46 years)

Fernando Francisco González Ciuffardi is a Chilean former professional tennis player. During his career, he reached at least the quarterfinals of all four major tournaments. He contested his only major final at the 2007 Australian Open, losing to top-seeded Roger Federer. González is the fourth man in history to have won an Olympic tennis medal in every color, with gold in doubles and bronze in singles from Athens 2004, and silver in singles from Beijing 2008. The gold medal that González won partnering Nicolás Massú at the 2004 Olympics in men's doubles was Chile's first-ever Olympic gold medal.

#12417

Susan Folkman

#12428

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Susan Kleppner Folkman is an American psychologist, author, and emerita professor of medicine at the University of California at San Francisco . She is internationally recognized for her contributions to the field of psychological stress and coping. Her 1984 book Stress, Appraisal and Coping alongside Richard S. Lazarus, is the most widely cited academic book in its field, and the 17th most cited book in social science.

#12418

Peter Feaver

#12429

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Peter Douglas Feaver is an American professor of political science and public policy at Duke University and a civil-military relations scholar. Feaver has served as director of the Triangle Institute for Security Studies since 1999, and founded Duke University's Program in American Grand Strategy. He served in the George W. Bush administration, where he served as a special advisor for strategic planning and institutional reform on the National Security Council. Prior to working on the National Security Council of George W. Bush, he served as director for defense policy and arms control at the National Security Council during the Clinton administration.

#12419

Zane Lowe

#12430

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Alexander Zane Reed Lowe is a New Zealand radio DJ, live DJ, record producer, and television presenter. After an early career in music creation, production and DJing, he moved to the UK in 1997. He came to prominence through presenting on XFM and MTV Europe , developing a DJ career by opening sets for bands and eventually landing a slot on prime-time radio on BBC Radio 1 from 2003 to 2015.

#12420

Mardy Fish

#12431

Overall Influence

1981 - Present (45 years)

Mardyn “Mardy” Simpson Fish is an American former professional tennis player. He was a hardcourt specialist. He is one of several American tennis players who rose to prominence in the early 2000s.

#12421

James W. Pennebaker

James W. Pennebaker

#12432

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

James Whiting Pennebaker is an American social psychologist. He is a Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Texas at Austin and a member of the Academy of Distinguished Teachers. His research focuses on the relationship between natural language use, health, and social behavior, most recently "how everyday language reflects basic social and personality processes".

#12422

Klaus Weber

#12433

Overall Influence

1936 - 2016 (80 years)

Klaus Weber was a German scientist who made many fundamentally important contributions to biochemistry, cell biology, and molecular biology, and was for many years the director of the Laboratory of Biochemistry and Cell Biology at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen, Germany.

#12423

Henry Cecil

#12434

Overall Influence

1943 - 2013 (70 years)

Sir Henry Richard Amherst Cecil was a British flat racing horse trainer. Cecil was very successful, becoming Champion Trainer ten times and training 25 domestic Classic winners. These comprised four winners of the Derby, eight winners of the Oaks, six winners of the 1,000 Guineas, three of the 2,000 Guineas and four winners of the St Leger Stakes. His 1000 Guineas and Oaks successes made him particularly renowned for his success with fillies. He was noted for his mastery at Royal Ascot, where he trained 75 winners.

#12424

Winy Maas

#12435

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Wilhelmus "Winy" Maas is a Dutch architect, landscape architect, professor and urbanist. In 1993 together with Jacob van Rijs and Nathalie de Vries he set up MVRDV. Education He completed his studies at the RHSTL Boskoop, graduating as a "landscape architect", and in 1990 he got his degree from the Delft University of Technology. He currently is visiting professor of architectural design at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is professor in architecture and urban design at the faculty of architecture, Delft University of Technology. Before this he was professor at among others Berl...

#12425

David L. Reich

#12436

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

David L. Reich is an American academic anesthesiologist, who has been President & Chief Operating Officer of The Mount Sinai Hospital, and President of Mount Sinai Queens , since October 2013. Reich is the Horace W. Goldsmith Professor of Anesthesiology at the Mount Sinai Medical Center, and from 2004 to 2014 he served as the Chair of the Department of Anesthesiology. In 2011, he received the Physician of the Year Award from Mount Sinai's nurses and nursing leadership. In 2011–12, he served as President of The Mount Sinai Hospital Medical Board. In 2014, he received the Jacobi Medallion from ...

#12426

William Garrison

#12437

Overall Influence

1924 - 2015 (91 years)

William Louis Garrison was an American geographer, transportation analyst and professor at the University of California, Berkeley. While at the Department of Geography, University of Washington in the 1950s, Garrison led the "quantitative revolution" in geography, which applied computers and statistics to the study of spatial problems. As such, he was one of the founders of regional science. Many of his students went on to become noted professors themselves, including: Brian Berry, Ronald Boyce, Duane Marble, Richard Morrill, John Nystuen, William Bunge, Michael Dacey, Arthur Getis, and Waldo Tobler.

#12427

Jerzy Sarnecki

#12438

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

#12428

John Andrews

#12439

Overall Influence

1933 - 2022 (89 years)

John Hamilton Andrews was an Australian architect, known for designing a number of acclaimed structures in Australia, Canada and the United States. He was Australia's first internationally recognised architect, and the 1980 RAIA Gold Medalist. He died peacefully in his hometown of Orange on 24 March 2022.

#12429

Tom R. Burns

#12440

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Tom R. Burns is an American/Swedish sociologist, professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Uppsala in Sweden and founder of the Uppsala Theory Circle. Biography He grew up in Arkansas, and was in a Franciscan Monastery for a number of years. As a teenager, he attended Phillips Academy Andover in Massachusetts, before going to Stanford University to study physics and mathematics, where he obtained his BS in physics in 1959. In the years 1959–60 he studied physics and sociology for almost two years at the University of Warsaw, Poland as an exchange student from Stanford. He returned ...

#12430

Spencer Wells

#12441

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Spencer Wells is an American geneticist, anthropologist, author and entrepreneur. He co-hosts The Insight podcast with Razib Khan. Wells led The Genographic Project from 2005 to 2015, as an Explorer-in-Residence at the National Geographic Society, and is the founder and executive director of personal genomics nonprofit The Insitome Institute.

#12431

Lewis Grizzard

#12442

Overall Influence

1946 - 1994 (48 years)

Lewis McDonald Grizzard Jr. was an American writer and humorist, known for his Southern demeanor and commentary on the American South. Although he spent his early career as a newspaper sports writer and editor, becoming the sports editor of the Atlanta Journal at age 23, he is much better known for his humorous newspaper columns in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a popular stand-up comedian and lecturer.

#12432

Stanley Wojcicki

#12443

Overall Influence

1937 - 2023 (86 years)

Stanley George Wojcicki was a Polish American professor emeritus and former chair of the physics department at Stanford University in California. Early life and education Wojcicki was born in Warsaw, Poland, the son of Janina Wanda Wójcicka , a bibliographer, and Franciszek Wójcicki, a lawyer. He and his brother fled from Poland to Sweden with his mother at the age of 12, when communists came to power. They eventually arrived in the United States. His father remained in Poland, and was soon imprisoned for five years for being a member of the government's main opposition party. He was never ab...

#12433

John Walker

#12444

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

John Walker is a computer programmer, author and co-founder of the computer-aided design software company Autodesk. He has more recently been recognized for his writing on his website Fourmilab. Early projects In 1974/1975, Walker wrote the ANIMAL software, which self-replicated on UNIVAC 1100 machines. It is considered one of the first computer viruses.

#12434

Steve Reich

#12445

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (90 years)

Stephen Michael Reich is an American composer who is known for his contribution to the development of minimal music in the mid to late 1960s. Reich's work is marked by its use of repetitive figures, slow harmonic rhythm, and canons. Reich describes this concept in his essay, "Music as a Gradual Process", by stating, "I am interested in perceptible processes. I want to be able to hear the process happening throughout the sounding music." For example, his early works experiment with phase shifting, in which one or more repeated phrases plays slower or faster than the others, causing it to go "o...

#12435

Dusty Springfield

#12446

Overall Influence

1939 - 1999 (60 years)

Mary Isobel Catherine Bernadette O'Brien , better known by her stage name Dusty Springfield, was an English singer. With her distinctive mezzo-soprano sound, she was a popular singer of blue-eyed soul, pop and dramatic ballads, with French chanson, country, and also jazz in her repertoire. During her 1960s peak, she ranked among the most successful British female performers on both sides of the Atlantic. Her image – marked by a peroxide blonde bouffant/beehive hairstyle, heavy makeup and evening gowns, as well as stylised, gestural performances – made her an icon of the Swinging Sixties.

#12436

David W. Anthony

#12447

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

David W. Anthony is an American anthropologist who is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Hartwick College. He specializes in Indo-European migrations, and is a proponent of the Kurgan hypothesis. Anthony is well known for his award-winning book The Horse, the Wheel, and Language .

#12437

Samuel Curran

#12448

Overall Influence

1912 - 1998 (86 years)

Sir Samuel Crowe Curran , FRS, FRSE, was a physicist and the first Principal and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Strathclyde – the first of the new technical universities in Britain. He is the inventor of the scintillation counter, the proportional counter, and the proximity fuze.

#12438

Berhane Asfaw

#12449

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Berhane Asfaw is an Ethiopian paleontologist of Rift Valley Research Service, who co-discovered human skeletal remains at Herto Bouri, Ethiopia later classified as Homo sapiens idaltu, proposed as an early subspecies of anatomically modern humans.

#12439

Daniel Boyarin

#12450

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Daniel Boyarin is an Israeli-American historian of religion. Born in New Jersey, he holds dual United States and Israeli citizenship. He is the Hermann P. and Sophia Taubman Professor of Talmudic Culture in the Departments of Near Eastern Studies and Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley. He is married to Chava Boyarin, a lecturer in Hebrew at UC Berkeley. They have two sons. His brother, Jonathan Boyarin, is also a scholar, and the two have written together. He has defined himself as a "diasporic rabbinic Jew".

#12440

Louise Charron

#12451

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Louise Charron, is a Canadian jurist. She was appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada in October, 2004, and is the first native-born Franco-Ontarian Supreme Court judge. Born in Sturgeon Falls, Ontario, Charron received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Carleton University in 1972, her Bachelor of Law degree from the University of Ottawa in 1975, and was called to the Bar of Ontario in 1977. She practiced civil litigation before joining the Crown Attorney's office in 1980. She then became a law professor at the University of Ottawa.

#12441

Trenchard More

#12452

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Trenchard More was a mathematician and computer scientist who worked at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center and Cambridge Scientific Center after teaching at MIT and Yale. He was also a full professor for two years at the Technical University of Denmark.

#12442

Francisco Ayala

Francisco Ayala

#12453

Overall Influence

1906 - 2009 (103 years)

Francisco Ayala García-Duarte was a Spanish writer, the last representative of the Generation of '27. Biography He was born on 16 March 1906 in Granada. At the age of 16 he went to Madrid, where he studied Law and Humanities. During those years he published his first two novels, Tragicomedia de un hombre sin espíritu and Historia de un amanecer .

#12443

Alfred Wainwright

#12454

Overall Influence

1907 - 1991 (84 years)

Alfred Wainwright MBE , who preferred to be known as A. Wainwright or A.W., was a British fellwalker, guidebook author and illustrator. His seven-volume Pictorial Guide to the Lakeland Fells, published between 1955 and 1966 and consisting entirely of reproductions of his manuscript, has become the standard reference work to 214 of the fells of the English Lake District. Among his 40-odd other books is the first guide to the Coast to Coast Walk, a long-distance footpath devised by Wainwright which remains popular today.

#12444

Benjamin Mako Hill

Benjamin Mako Hill

#12455

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (46 years)

Benjamin Mako Hill is a free software activist, hacker, author, and professor. He is a contributor and free software developer as part of the Debian and Ubuntu projects as well as the co-author of three technical manuals on the subject, Debian GNU/Linux 3.1 Bible, The Official Ubuntu Server Book, and The Official Ubuntu Book.

#12445

Johanna Weber

#12456

Overall Influence

1910 - 2014 (104 years)

Johanna Weber was a German-born British mathematician and aerodynamicist. She is best known for her contributions to the development of the Handley Page Victor bomber and the Concorde. Early life Johanna Weber was born in a family of Walloon origin in Düsseldorf, Germany, on August 8, 1910. Her father died in the First World War. As a 'war orphan', Weber was eligible for financial support, and she attended a convent school.

#12446

Denis MacEoin

#12457

Overall Influence

1949 - 2022 (73 years)

Denis M. MacEoin was a British academic, scholar and writer with a focus on Persian, Arabic and Islamic studies. He authored several academic books and articles, as well as many pieces of journalism. Since 2014 he published a number of essays on current events with a Middle Eastern focus at the Gatestone Institute, of which he was a Senior Fellow. He was a Senior Editor from 2009 to 2010 at Middle East Quarterly, a publication of the American think tank Middle East Forum, where he was also a Fellow.

#12447

Ahron Bregman

#12458

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Ahron "Ronnie" Bregman is a UK-based political scientist of Israeli origin, as well as a writer and journalist, specialising on the Arab–Israeli conflict. Biography Bregman was born and raised in Israel. He served in the Israel Defense Forces and as an artillery officer participated in the 1978 Litani campaign and the 1982 Lebanon War. After the war he left the army to study international relations and political science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He also worked as a parliamentary assistant in the Knesset. After giving an interview in 1988 to the Haaretz newspaper declaring that ...

#12448

Stanley Wells

#12459

Overall Influence

1930 - Present (96 years)

Sir Stanley William Wells, is an English Shakespearean scholar, writer, professor and editor who has been honorary president of the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, professor emeritus at Birmingham University, and author of many books about Shakespeare, including Shakespeare Sex and Love, and is general editor of the Oxford Shakespeare and New Penguin Shakespeare series. He lives in Stratford-upon-Avon and was educated in English at University College, London .

#12449

Harold Hopkins

#12460

Overall Influence

1918 - 1994 (76 years)

Harold Horace Hopkins FRS was a British physicist. His Wave Theory of Aberrations, , is central to all modern optical design and provides the mathematical analysis which enables the use of computers to create the highest quality lenses. In addition to his theoretical work, his many inventions are in daily use throughout the world. These include zoom lenses, coherent fibre-optics and more recently the rod-lens endoscopes which 'opened the door' to modern key-hole surgery. He was the recipient of many of the world's most prestigious awards and was twice nominated for a Nobel Prize. His citation...

#12450

Steven Gubser

#12461

Overall Influence

1972 - 2019 (47 years)

Steven Scott Gubser was a professor of physics at Princeton University. His research focused on theoretical particle physics, especially string theory, and the AdS/CFT correspondence. He was a widely cited scholar in these and other related areas.

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