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

#12701

John L. Lumley

#12712

Overall Influence

1930 - 2015 (85 years)

John Leask Lumley was an American fluid dynamicist and a professor at Cornell University. He is widely known for his research in turbulence and is the coauthor of A First Course in Turbulence along with Hendrik Tennekes.

#12702

Shehu Shagari

#12713

Overall Influence

1925 - 2018 (93 years)

Shehu Usman Aliyu Shagari was a Nigerian politician who was the first democratically elected president of Nigeria, after the transfer of power by military head of state General Olusegun Obasanjo in 1979 giving rise to the Second Nigerian Republic.

#12703

Jean-Claude Latombe

#12714

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Jean-Claude Latombe is a French-American roboticist and the Kumagai Professor Emeritus in the School of Engineering at Stanford University. Latombe is a researcher in robot motion planning, and has authored one of the most highly cited books in the field.

#12704

Hiroshi Ishii

#12715

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Hiroshi Ishii is a Japanese computer scientist. He is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Ishii pioneered the Tangible User Interface in the field of Human-computer interaction with the paper "Tangible Bits: Towards Seamless Interfaces between People, Bits and Atoms", co-authored with his then PhD student Brygg Ullmer.

#12705

Athanassios S. Fokas

#12716

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Athanassios Spyridon Fokas is a Greek mathematician, with degrees in Aeronautical Engineering and Medicine. Since 2002, he is Professor of Nonlinear Mathematical Science in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge.

#12706

J. N. Reddy

#12717

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Junuthula N. Reddy is a Distinguished Professor, Regent's Professor, and inaugural holder of the Oscar S. Wyatt Endowed Chair in Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, USA.[1] He is an authoritative figure in the broad area of mechanics and one of the researchers responsible for the development of the Finite Element Method . He has made significant seminal contributions in the areas of finite element method, plate theory, solid mechanics, variational methods, mechanics of composites, functionally graded materials, fracture mechanics, plasticity, biomechanics, classical and non-Newtonian fluid mechanics, and applied functional analysis.

#12707

Chang-Rae Lee

#12718

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Chang-rae Lee is a Korean-American novelist and a professor of creative writing at Stanford University. He was previously Professor of Creative Writing at Princeton and director of Princeton's Program in Creative Writing.

#12708

Feliciano López

Feliciano López

#12719

Overall Influence

1981 - Present (45 years)

Feliciano López Díaz-Guerra is a Spanish former professional tennis player. He achieved his career-high singles ranking of world No. 12 in March 2015 and doubles ranking of world No. 9 in November 2016. In 2005, López was the first male Spanish tennis player to reach the quarterfinals of Wimbledon since 1972. He repeated the feat in 2008 and 2011. López defeated Tim Henman at the 2007 Wimbledon second round. He reached the quarterfinals of the 2015 US Open, and won his first Grand Slam title at the 2016 French Open when he won the men's doubles title with Marc López. In 2017, at the age of 35...

#12709

Robert Bourassa

#12720

Overall Influence

1933 - 1996 (63 years)

Robert Bourassa was a Canadian lawyer and politician who served as the 22nd premier of Quebec from 1970 to 1976 and from 1985 to 1994. A member of the Liberal Party of Quebec, he served a total of just under 15 years as premier. Bourassa's tenure was marked by major events affecting Quebec, including the October Crisis and the Meech Lake and Charlottetown Accords.

#12710

Eric N. Olson

#12721

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Eric N. Olson is a professor and chair of the Department of Molecular Biology, Robert A. Welch Distinguished Chair in Science, the Annie and Willie Nelson Professor of Stem Cell Research, and the Pogue Distinguished Chair in Research on Cardiac Birth Defects for the UT Southwestern Medical Center. He earned a B.A. in chemistry and biology and a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Wake Forest University. He completed his postdoctoral studies at the Washington University School of Medicine. Olson and his team have worked to better understand how the heart develops and works, as well as the behaviors of diseases and disorders of the cardiovascular and skeletal muscle tissue.

#12711

Brendan Nyhan

#12722

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (48 years)

Brendan Nyhan is an American political scientist and professor at Dartmouth College. He is also a liberal to moderate political blogger, author, and political columnist. He was born in Mountain View, California and now lives in Hanover, New Hampshire.

#12712

Meave Leakey

#12723

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Meave G. Leakey is a British palaeoanthropologist. She works at Stony Brook University and is co-ordinator of Plio-Pleistocene research at the Turkana Basin Institute. She studies early hominid evolution and has done extensive field research in the Turkana Basin. She has Doctor of Philosophy and Doctor of Science degrees.

#12713

Roberto Carlos

#12724

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Roberto Carlos da Silva Rocha , often known as Roberto Carlos and sometimes as RC3 is a Brazilian former professional footballer. He has been described as the "most offensive-minded left-back in the history of the game", and one of the greatest full-backs in history. In 1997, he was runner-up in the FIFA World Player of the Year. He is primarily known for his long career at Real Madrid and ever-presence in the Brazilian national team.

#12714

Jane Chapman

#12725

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Jane Chapman is a British academic, professor of communications at the University of Lincoln, a research associate and a former fellow at Wolfson College, Cambridge and the Centre of South Asian Studies, Cambridge. She is the author of twelve books and over 35 academic articles and book chapters.

#12715

Stanley Greenspan

#12726

Overall Influence

1941 - 2010 (69 years)

Stanley Greenspan was a clinical professor of Psychiatry, Behavioral Science, and Pediatrics at George Washington University Medical School and a practicing child psychiatrist. He was best known for developing the influential floortime approach for treating children with autistic spectrum disorders and developmental disabilities.

#12716

Miguel de la Madrid

#12727

Overall Influence

1934 - 2012 (78 years)

Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado was a Mexican politician affiliated with the Institutional Revolutionary Party who served as the 59th president of Mexico from 1982 to 1988. Inheriting a severe economic and financial crisis from his predecessor José López Portillo as a result of the international drop in oil prices and a crippling external debt on which Mexico had defaulted months before he took office, De la Madrid introduced sweeping neoliberal policies to overcome the crisis, beginning an era of market-oriented presidents in Mexico, along with austerity measures involving deep cuts in public spending.

#12717

Michael Shifter

Michael Shifter

#12728

Overall Influence

Michael E. Shifter is president of the Inter-American Dialogue and an adjunct professor of Latin American studies at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and writes for the council's journal Foreign Affairs. He is also a member of the Latin American Studies Association , and a contributing editor to Current History.

#12718

A. K. Warder

#12729

Overall Influence

1924 - 2013 (89 years)

Anthony Kennedy Warder was a British Indologist. His best-known works are Introduction to Pali , Indian Buddhism , and the eight-volume Indian Kāvya Literature . Life Warder was born in England on 8 September 1924.

#12719

Joshua Rifkin

#12730

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Joshua Rifkin is an American conductor, pianist, and musicologist; he is currently a professor of music at Boston University. As a performer he has recorded music by composers from Antoine Busnois to Silvestre Revueltas, and as a scholar has published research on composers from the Renaissance to the 20th century.

#12720

Rivaldo

#12731

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Rivaldo Vítor Borba Ferreira , known simply as Rivaldo, is a Brazilian former footballer who played mainly as an attacking midfielder but also as a second striker, and on occasion deployed as a wide midfielder or as a winger. Rivaldo is regarded as one of the greatest player of all time, and one of the greatest Brazilian players and among the most skillful and creative players of all time . He was renowned for his bending free kicks, bicycle kicks, feints, powerful ball striking from distance, and ability to both score and create goals. In 1999, he won the Ballon d'Or and was named FIFA World Player of the Year.

#12721

Paul Mariani

#12732

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Paul Mariani is an American poet and is University Professor Emeritus at Boston College. Life Paul Mariani is the University Professor Emeritus at Boston College, specializing in Modern American and British Poetry, religion and literature, and creative writing . Born February 29, 1940 in Astoria, Queens, he grew up in New York City and Long Island and is the oldest of seven children. He was educated at Chaminade, Beacon Marianist Prep, Mineola High School, Manhattan College, Colgate University, and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where his mentor was the Dante scholar, Allen Mandelbaum.

#12722

Morinobu Endo

#12733

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Morinobu Endo is a Japanese physicist and chemist, often cited as one of the pioneers of carbon nanofibers and carbon nanotubes synthesis at the beginning of the 1970s. He demonstrated carbon fibers can be grown by gas pyrolysis and traveled to Orléans, France in 1974 working with Madame Agnès Oberlin at CNRS in her laboratory. He discovered carbon nanotubes in 1976 as part of his studies at University of Orleans in France. He has been awarded the Charles E. Pettinos Award from the American Carbon Society in 2001, "For his pioneering work and applications of carbon nanotubes", Medal of Achiev...

#12723

Mehrdad Avesta

#12734

Overall Influence

1930 - 1991 (61 years)

Mehrdad Avesta was an Iranian poet. He was born in Borujerd into a literature and art-oriented family. When he was young, he changed his first name from Mohammad Reza to Mehrdad and his family name from Rahmani to Avesta in order to show his passion for ancient Persian culture.

#12724

Michael E. Phelps

#12735

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Michael Edward Phelps is a professor and an American biophysicist. He is known for being one of the fathers of positron emission tomography . Biography Phelps was born in 1939 in Cleveland, Ohio. He spent his early life as a boxer. However, at age 19, he was severely injured in a car crash, leaving him in a coma for several days and effectively ending his boxing career. Phelps went on to earn his B.S. in chemistry and mathematics from Western Washington University in 1965, and his Ph.D. in chemistry from Washington University in St. Louis, in 1970. He joined the faculty of Washington University School of Medicine in 1970.

#12725

Stephanie Forrest

#12736

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Stephanie Forrest is an American computer scientist and director of the Biodesign Center for Biocomputing, Security and Society at the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University. She was previously Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. She is best known for her work in adaptive systems, including genetic algorithms, computational immunology, biological modeling, automated software repair, and computer security.

#12726

Shalanda Young

#12737

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (49 years)

Shalanda Delores Young is an American political advisor who is the current director of the Office of Management and Budget, previously serving in an acting capacity from March 24, 2021, through March 17, 2022 concurrently as deputy director. She previously worked for the United States House Committee on Appropriations as its staff director.

#12727

Melanie Wood

#12738

Overall Influence

1981 - Present (45 years)

Melanie Matchett Wood is an American mathematician at Harvard University who was the first woman to qualify for the U.S. International Mathematical Olympiad Team. She completed her PhD in 2009 at Princeton University and is currently Professor of Mathematics at Harvard University, after being Chancellor's Professor of Mathematics at UC Berkeley and Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of Mathematics at the University of Wisconsin, and spending 2 years as Szegö Assistant Professor at Stanford University.

#12728

Yury Yershov

#12739

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Yury Leonidovich Yershov is a Soviet and Russian mathematician. Yury Yershov was born in 1940 in Novosibirsk. In 1958 he entered the Tomsk State University and in 1963 graduated from the Mathematical Department of the Novosibirsk State University. In 1964 he successfully defended his PhD thesis "Decidable and Undecidable Theories" . In 1966 he successfully defended his DrSc thesis "Elementary Theory of Fields" .

#12729

Moo-Young Han

#12740

Overall Influence

1934 - 2016 (82 years)

Moo-Young Han was a South Korean-born American physicist. He was a professor of physics at Duke University. Along with Yoichiro Nambu of the University of Chicago, he is credited with introducing the SU symmetry of quarks, today known as the color charge. The color charge is the basis of the strong force as explained by quantum chromodynamics.

#12730

Charles A. Dinarello

Charles A. Dinarello

#12741

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Charles A. Dinarello is a professor of medicine at the University of Colorado at Denver. He is an expert on inflammatory cytokines, specifically Interleukin 1. Education and career Dinarello received his Doctor of Medicine in 1969 at Yale University and since 1996, he is Professor of Medicine at University of Colorado School of Medicine. He is also Professor of Experimental Medicine at the Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Dinarello is considered one of the founding fathers of cytokines having purified and cloned interleukin-1. This important step established the validation of cytokines as mediators of disease, particularly of inflammation.

#12731

Václav Vojta

#12742

Overall Influence

1917 - 2000 (83 years)

Václav Vojta was a renowned Czech medical doctor who specialized in the treatment of children with cerebral palsy and developmental disorders. He discovered the principle of reflex locomotion, which is used to treat various physical and neuromuscular disorders through the stimulation of the human sensomotoric system's reflex points. Originally used in the treatment of spastic children, the technique is now used on babies and adults.

#12732

Hamid Algar

#12743

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Hamid Algar is a British-American Professor Emeritus of Persian studies at the Faculty of Near Eastern Studies, University of California, Berkeley. He writes on Persian and Arabic literature and contemporary history of Iran, Turkey, the Balkans and Afghanistan. He served on the UC Berkeley faculty for 45 years . Algar remains an active scholar and his research has concentrated on the Islamic history of the Perso-Turkish world, with particular emphasis on Iranian Shi'ism during the past two centuries and the Naqshbandi Sufi order. Algar is a Shia Muslim.

#12733

Hans-Joachim Niemann

#12744

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Hans-Joachim Niemann , is a German philosopher and PhD chemist, who has become known especially as a translator and editor of works by Karl Popper, including first editions and first translations. As a scholarly writer, he first published scientific papers, then many essays and several books on Karl Popper's philosophy and Critical Rationalism, including a 400-page Lexicon of Critical Rationalism. His Popper studies helped to establish Karl Popper as a major ethicist and as an important biophilosopher.

#12734

Takashi Gojobori

Takashi Gojobori

#12745

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

is a Japanese molecular biologist, Vice-Director of the National Institute of Genetics and the DNA Data Bank of Japan at NIG, in Mishima, Japan. Gojobori is a Distinguished Professor at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Thuwal, Saudi Arabia. He is a Professor of Bioscience and Acting Director at the Computational Bioscience Research Center at KAUST.

#12735

Ronold W. P. King

#12746

Overall Influence

1905 - 2006 (101 years)

Ronold Wyeth Percival King was an American applied physicist, known for his contributions to the theory and application of microwave antennas. He published twelve books and over three hundred articles in his area, as well as mentored one hundred doctoral dissertations.

#12736

Michael D. Coe

#12747

Overall Influence

1929 - 2019 (90 years)

Michael Douglas Coe was an American archaeologist, anthropologist, epigrapher, and author. He is known for his research on pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, particularly the Maya, and was among the foremost Mayanists of the late twentieth century. He specialised in comparative studies of ancient tropical forest civilizations, such as those of Central America and Southeast Asia. He held the chair of Charles J. MacCurdy Professor of Anthropology, Emeritus, Yale University, and was curator emeritus of the Anthropology collection in the Peabody Museum of Natural History, where he had been curator from 1...

#12737

Anton Pelinka

#12748

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Anton Pelinka is a professor of political science and nationalism studies at the English-speaking Central European University of Budapest. Prior to this appointment, Pelinka was a professor of political science at the University of Innsbruck, one of Austria's largest universities. During his career he has also served as a dean, with his most recent tenure in this role occurring between the years of 2004 and 2006 when he was dean of the Faculty of Political Science and Sociology at the University of Innsbruck.

#12738

John Ogbu

#12749

Overall Influence

1939 - 2003 (64 years)

John Uzo Ogbu was a Nigerian-American anthropologist and professor known for his theories on observed phenomena involving race and intelligence, especially how race and ethnic differences played out in educational and economic achievement. He suggested that being a "caste-like minority" affects motivation and achievement, depressing IQ scores. He also concluded that some students did poorly because high achievement was considered "acting white" among their peers. Ogbu was also involved in the 1996 controversy surrounding the use of African American Vernacular English in public schools in Oakland, California.

#12739

Trinh Xuan Thuan

Trinh Xuan Thuan

#12750

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Trịnh Xuân Thuận is a Vietnamese-American astrophysicist. Biography Trịnh Xuân Thuận was born in Hanoi, Vietnam. He completed his B.S. at the California Institute of Technology, and his Ph.D. at Princeton University. He has taught astronomy at the University of Virginia, where he is a professor, since 1976, and is also a research associate at the Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris. He was a founding member of the International Society for Science and Religion.

#12740

Sebastián Edwards

Sebastián Edwards

#12751

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Sebastián Edwards a member of the Edwards family is a Chilean economist, professor, speaker, and consultant. He is currently the Henry Ford II Professor of International Business Economics at the UCLA Anderson School of Management at the University of California, Los Angeles . From 1993 until April 1996, he was the Chief Economist for the Latin America and Caribbean Region of the World Bank. He is also a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research , a member of the advisory board of Transnational Research Corporation and co-chairman of the Inter American Seminar on Economics .

#12741

Scott Patterson

#12752

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Scott Patterson is an American financial journalist and bestselling author. He is a staff reporter at The Wall Street Journal and author of Dark Pools: High-Speed Traders, A.I. Bandits, and the Threat to the Global Financial System and The New York Times bestselling book The Quants.

#12742

W. A. Speck

#12753

Overall Influence

1938 - 2017 (79 years)

William Arthur Speck was a British historian who specialised in late 17th and 18th-century British and American history. He was born in Bradford and was the son of a bookbinder. He was educated at Bradford Grammar School before winning a scholarship to The Queen's College, Oxford, where he gained a BA in 1960 and a D.Phil. in 1966.

#12743

Oswald Bayer

#12754

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Oswald Bayer is a German Lutheran theologian, and is Professor Emeritus of Systematic Theology at the Evangelical Theological Faculty of the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, Germany. The author of several books in German, he is also an ordained pastor of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church in Württemberg and president of the senate of the Luther Academy in Ratzeburg. Although Bayer is a major contemporary Lutheran theologian, so far little of his work has been translated from German into English.

#12744

Wau Holland

#12755

Overall Influence

1951 - 2001 (50 years)

Herwart Holland-Moritz, known as Wau Holland, was a German computer security activist and journalist who in 1981 cofounded the Chaos Computer Club , one of the world's oldest hacking clubs. Career From 1979 onwards, Holland supported the film historian Hans-Michael Bock with the development of the filmographic database CineGraph - a lexicon for German-language films, which appeared as a loose-leaf collection from 1984. In 1981, Holland co-founded the Chaos Computer Club .

#12745

Shannon Vallor

#12756

Overall Influence

Shannon Vallor is an American philosopher of technology. She is the Baillie Gifford Chair in the Ethics of Data and Artificial Intelligence at the Edinburgh Futures Institute. She was at Santa Clara University in Santa Clara, California where she was the Regis and Dianne McKenna Professor of Philosophy at SCU.

#12746

Huda Zoghbi

#12757

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Huda Yahya Zoghbi , born Huda El-Hibri, is a Lebanese-born American geneticist, and a professor at the Departments of Molecular and Human Genetics, Neuroscience and Neurology at the Baylor College of Medicine. She is the director of the Jan and Dan Duncan Neurological Research Institute. She became the editor of the Annual Review of Neuroscience as of 2018.

#12747

Oliver Kahn

#12758

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Oliver Rolf Kahn is a German football executive and former professional player who played as a goalkeeper. He started his career in the Karlsruher SC Junior team in 1975. Twelve years later, Kahn made his debut match in the professional squad. In 1994, he was transferred to Bayern Munich for the fee of DM 4.6 million, where he played until the end of his career in 2008. His commanding presence in goal and aggressive style earned him nicknames such as Der Titan from the press and Vol-kahn-o from fans.

#12748

Wayne Rosing

#12759

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Wayne Rosing is an American engineering manager. Rosing was an engineering manager at Digital Equipment Corporation and Data General in the 1970s. He became a director of engineering at Apple Computer in 1980. There he led the Apple Lisa project, the forerunner to the Macintosh. He then went on to work at Sun Microsystems in 1985. After managing hardware development for products such as the SPARCstation, he became manager of Sun Microsystems Laboratories in 1990. From 1992 through 1996 he headed the spin-off First Person, which developed the Java Platform. He was then chief technology offic...

#12749

Garth Nix

#12760

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Garth Richard Nix is an Australian writer who specialises in children's and young adult fantasy novels, notably the Old Kingdom, Seventh Tower and Keys to the Kingdom series. He has frequently been asked if his name is a pseudonym, to which he has responded, "I guess people ask me because it sounds like the perfect name for a writer of fantasy. However, it is my real name."

#12750

Irina Antonova

#12761

Overall Influence

1922 - 2020 (98 years)

Irina Aleksandrovna Antonova was a Soviet and Russian art historian who served as a Director of the Pushkin Museum in Moscow for 52 years, from 1961 to 2013, making her the oldest and the longest serving director of a major art museum in the world. Among her many awards and decorations are the State Prize of the Russian Federation and the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. She was the President of the Pushkin Museum, a ceremonial post.

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