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 …

See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.

Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people

#12951

David Apter

#12962

Overall Influence

1924 - 2010 (86 years)

David Ernest Apter was an American political scientist and sociologist. He was Henry J. Heinz Professor of Comparative Political and Social Development and senior research scientist at Yale University.

#12952

Michael C. Reed

#12963

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Michael Charles Reed is an American mathematician known for his contributions to mathematical physics and mathematical biology. Reed first attended Yale University, where he graduated with a bachelor's degree. In 1969 he earned a PhD from Stanford University. Since 1977 he has taught at Duke University, where he is the Bishop-MacDermott Professor of Mathematics.

#12953

The Edge

#12964

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

David Howell Evans , better known as the Edge or simply Edge, is an English-born Irish musician, singer, and songwriter. He is best known as the lead guitarist, keyboardist, and backing vocalist of the rock band U2. A member of the group since its inception, he has recorded 15 studio albums with them as well as one solo record. His understated style of guitar playing, a signature of U2's music, is distinguished by chiming timbres, use of rhythmic delay, drone notes, harmonics, and an extensive use of effects units.

#12954

Charles Altieri

#12965

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Charles Altieri is the Rachel Stageberg Anderson Professor and Chair in the Department of English at the University of California, Berkeley. Background Altieri specializes in 20th century American and British Literature and teaches graduate courses on Nineteenth Century Thought, Victorian Literature, Modern and Contemporary English and American Poetry, Modern and Classical Literary Theory, Literature and the Visual Arts, and seminars on specific poets, theoretical problems, and interdisciplinary period studies. In his book on the reading of Wallace Stevens as a poet of what Altieri calls 'phil...

#12955

Hilary Kornblith

#12966

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Hilary Kornblith is an American philosopher. He is a professor of philosophy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and one of contemporary epistemology's most prominent proponents of naturalized epistemology.

#12956

Bernice Neugarten

#12967

Overall Influence

1916 - 2001 (85 years)

Bernice Neugarten was an American psychologist who specialised in adult development and the psychology of ageing. Biography Neugarten was born to a Jewish family in Norfolk, Nebraska, where she spent her childhood and early teenage years. Neugarten started as an early undergraduate at the University of Chicago at the age of 16, obtaining her bachelor's degree in English and French Literature in 1936. She also obtained a Master's degree in Educational Psychology master's degree in educational psychology and her Ph.D. in human development. In 1960, Neugarten was the first person at the Univer...

#12957

Marilyn Farquhar

#12968

Overall Influence

1928 - 2019 (91 years)

Marilyn Gist Farquhar was a pathologist and cellular biologist, Professor of Cellular and Molecular Medicine and Pathology, as well as the chair of the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, who previously worked at Yale University from 1973 to 1990. She has won the E. B. Wilson Medal and the FASEB Excellence in Science Award. She was married to Nobel Laureate George Emil Palade from 1970 to his death in 2008. Her research focuses on control of intracellular membrane traffic and the molecular pathogenesis of auto immune kidney diseases.

#12958

Sunetra Gupta

#12969

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Sunetra Gupta is an Indian-born British infectious disease epidemiologist and a professor of theoretical epidemiology at the Department of Zoology, University of Oxford. She has performed research on the transmission dynamics of various infectious diseases, including malaria, influenza and COVID-19, and has received the Scientific Medal of the Zoological Society of London and the Rosalind Franklin Award of the Royal Society. She is a member of the scientific advisory board of Collateral Global, an organisation which examines the global impact of COVID-19 restrictions.

#12959

Paul Thieme

#12970

Overall Influence

1905 - 2001 (96 years)

Paul Thieme was a German indologist and scholar of Vedic Sanskrit. In 1988 he was awarded the Kyoto Prize in Arts and Philosophy for "he added immensely to our knowledge of Vedic and other classical Indian literature and provided a solid foundation to the study of the history of Indian thought".

#12960

Khaled S. Al-Sultan

#12971

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Dr. Khaled S. Al-Sultan was the fourth rector of King Fahd University for Petroleum and Minerals a public university in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia and the first to have graduated from the institution to hold this position. Dr. Al-Sultan is married and has two children.

#12961

Shinji Miyadai

#12972

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

is a Japanese sociologist and professor at Tokyo Metropolitan University. He has a PhD from the University of Tokyo for his research on Mathematical sociology. Using the method of game theory, he analyzed how the power of the state works in society. He is one of the most outspoken sociologists in Japan, and is currently working on the strategy the Japanese government should adopt for the 21st century.

#12962

Günter Behnisch

Günter Behnisch

#12973

Overall Influence

1922 - 2010 (88 years)

Günter Behnisch was a German architect, born in Lockwitz, near Dresden. During the Second World War he became one of Germany's youngest submarine commanders. Subsequently, Behnisch became one of the most prominent architects representing deconstructivism. His prominent projects included the Olympic Park in Munich and the new West German parliament in Bonn.

#12963

Bobby Moore

#12974

Overall Influence

1941 - 1993 (52 years)

Robert Frederick Chelsea Moore was an English professional footballer. He most notably played for West Ham United, captaining the club for more than ten years, and was the captain of the England national team that won the 1966 FIFA World Cup. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest defenders in the history of football, and was cited by Pelé as the greatest defender that he had ever played against. Furthermore, Moore is sometimes considered to be one of the greatest players of all time.

#12964

Raffi Krikorian

Raffi Krikorian

#12975

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (48 years)

Raffi Krikorian is an Armenian-American technology executive, and the CTO of the Emerson Collective. He was the CTO of the Democratic National Committee, Head of Uber's Advanced Technologies Center, and the former VP of Platform Engineering at Twitter where he was in charge of infrastructure for all of Twitter up to August 2014. He is credited with leading the charge to improve the reliability of Twitter as well as the move from Ruby to the JVM. He currently also serves on the board of directors of the Tumo Center for Creative Technologies in Yerevan, Armenia.

#12965

Jon Scieszka

#12976

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Jon Scieszka is an American children's writer, best known for his picture books created with the illustrator Lane Smith. He is also a nationally recognized reading advocate, and the founder of Guys Read – a web-based literacy program for boys whose mission is "to help boys become self-motivated, lifelong readers."

#12966

Marshall Ganz

#12977

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Marshall Ganz is the Rita E. Hauser Senior Lecturer in Leadership, Organizing, and Civil Society at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Introduced to organizing in the American civil rights movement, he worked on the staff of the United Farm Workers for sixteen years, became trainer and organizer for political campaigns, unions and nonprofit groups, and returned to Harvard where he earned his PhD in Sociology . He is credited with devising the successful grassroots organizing model and training for Barack Obama’s winning 2008 presidential campaign.

#12967

José Zalaquett

#12978

Overall Influence

1942 - 2020 (78 years)

José "Pepe" Zalaquett Daher was a Chilean lawyer, renowned for his work in the defence of human rights during the de facto regime that governed Chile under General Augusto Pinochet from 1973 to 1990.

#12968

Friedrich Schorlemmer

#12979

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Friedrich Schorlemmer is a German Protestant theologian. He was a prominent member of the civil rights movement in the German Democratic Republic and has continued to take part in politics after German reunification in 1990.

#12969

Howard Caygill

#12980

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Howard Caygill is a British philosopher. He has held the position of Professor of Modern European Philosophy at the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy , Kingston University since 2011. Previously he had taught at University of East Anglia and Goldsmiths College, University of London.

#12970

Hendrik S. Houthakker

Hendrik S. Houthakker

#12981

Overall Influence

1924 - 2008 (84 years)

Hendrik Samuel Houthakker was a prominent American economist. Life and career Houthakker was born in Amsterdam to a Dutch-Jewish family. His father was a prominent art dealer. As a teenager he lived through the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands and, according to an interview he gave to the Valley News, was once arrested by the Gestapo but escaped and was sheltered for some months by a Roman Catholic family. He completed his graduate work at the University of Amsterdam in 1949. He taught at Stanford University from 1954 to 1960 and then completed the rest of his career at Harvard University.

#12971

David Kaiser

#12982

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

David I. Kaiser is an American physicist and historian of science. He is Germeshausen Professor of the History of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a full professor in MIT's department of physics. He also served as an inaugural associate dean for MIT's cross-disciplinary program in Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing.

#12972

Bob Noorda

#12983

Overall Influence

1927 - 2010 (83 years)

Bob Noorda was a Dutch-born Italian graphic designer who lived and worked primarily in Milan from 1954 onwards. His works included design projects for major corporations and large-scale retail chains, publishing houses as well as public works such as the Milan Metro and NYC subway sign and image systems. During his career as a designer, Noorda created more than 170 logos for clients like Feltrinelli, Olivetti, Eni, Zucchi, Touring Club Italiano, Ermenegildo Zegna, and many others.

#12973

Petr Čech

#12984

Overall Influence

1982 - Present (44 years)

Petr Čech is a Czech former professional footballerer who played as a goalkeeper. He now plays ice hockey as a goaltender for Belfast Giants, on loan from Oxford City Stars. He has been described as one of the greatest goalkeepers of all time, and as one of the best in Premier League history.

#12974

David M. O'Connell

#12985

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

David Michael O'Connell is an American prelate of the Roman Catholic Church, serving as the bishop of the Diocese of Trenton in New Jersey since 2010. He is a member of the Congregation of the Mission and a past president of the Catholic University of America.

#12975

Murray G. Ross

#12986

Overall Influence

1910 - 2000 (90 years)

Murray George Ross, was a Canadian sociologist, author, and academic administrator. He was the founding president of Toronto's York University and served in that role from 1959 to 1970. Born in Sydney, Nova Scotia, the son of James Alway Ross and Sarah Agnes Kay, Ross received a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics and sociology from Acadia University in 1936. He received a Master of Arts degree in sociology from the University of Toronto in 1938. He did post-graduate work in sociology at the University of Chicago in 1939 and in Social psychology from Columbia University in 1949. He received a LL.D.

#12976

Ralph Faudree

#12987

Overall Influence

1939 - 2015 (76 years)

Ralph Jasper Faudree was a mathematician, a professor of mathematics and the former provost of the University of Memphis. Faudree was born in Durant, Oklahoma. He did his undergraduate studies at Oklahoma Baptist University, graduating in 1961, and received his Ph.D. in 1964 from Purdue University under the supervision of Eugene Schenkman . Faudree was an instructor at the University of California, Berkeley and an assistant professor at the University of Illinois before joining the Memphis State University faculty as an associate professor in 1971. Memphis State became renamed as the Universi...

#12977

Pauline Kael

#12988

Overall Influence

1919 - 2001 (82 years)

Pauline Kael was an American film critic who wrote for The New Yorker from 1968 to 1991. Known for her "witty, biting, highly opinionated and sharply focused" reviews, Kael's opinions often ran contrary to those of her contemporaries.

#12978

Keith LeBlanc

#12989

Overall Influence

Keith LeBlanc is an American drummer and record producer, and is a member of the bands Little Axe and Tackhead. His record "No Sell Out" was one of the first sample-based releases. The song was a success, charting at No. 60 on the UK Singles Chart, and becoming the single of the week for several major music publications. His career started out on Sugar Hill Records recording with hip hop pioneers Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel, and released several singles on and was a studio musician for Tommy Boy Records. He is also featured on several tracks on the album Pretty Hate Machine by Nine Inch Nails.

#12979

Guy Sircello

#12990

Overall Influence

1936 - 1992 (56 years)

Guy Sircello was an American philosopher best known for his analytic approach to philosophical aesthetics. Biography Guy Sircello was born in Tacoma, Washington, and attended Lincoln High School. His parents were Pete and Teresa Sircello, and he had a younger sister, Teresa. Upon high school graduation, he was awarded the prestigious George Baker full four-year scholarship to Reed College, in Portland, Oregon, and graduated in 1958 with a double major in philosophy and history. In 1960, he married Sharon Chapin, a fellow Reed graduate, and shortly after, they left New York for Hamburg, where ...

#12980

Federico Capasso

#12991

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Federico Capasso is an applied physicist and is one of the inventors of the quantum cascade laser during his work at Bell Laboratories. He is currently on the faculty of Harvard University. Biography Federico Capasso received the Doctor of Physics degree, summa cum laude, from the University of Rome, Italy, in 1973 and after doing research in fiber optics at Fondazione Ugo Bordoni in Rome, joined Bell Labs in 1976.

#12981

Vasant Dhar

#12992

Overall Influence

Vasant Dhar is a professor at the Stern School of Business and the Center for Data Science at New York University, former editor-in-chief of the journal Big Data and the founder of SCT Capital, one of the first machine-learning-based hedge funds in New York City in the 1990s. His research focuses on building scalable decision-making systems from large sources of data using techniques and principles from the disciplines of artificial intelligence and machine learning.

#12982

Phạm Văn Đồng

#12993

Overall Influence

1906 - 2000 (94 years)

Phạm Văn Đồng was a Vietnamese politician who served as Prime Minister of North Vietnam from 1955 to 1976. He later served as Prime Minister of Vietnam following reunification of North and South Vietnam from 1976 until he retired in 1987 under the rule of Lê Duẩn and Nguyễn Văn Linh. He was considered one of Hồ Chí Minh's closest lieutenants.

#12983

Julia Alvarez

#12994

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Julia Alvarez is an American New Formalist poet, novelist, and essayist. She rose to prominence with the novels How the García Girls Lost Their Accents , In the Time of the Butterflies , and Yo! . Her publications as a poet include Homecoming and The Woman I Kept to Myself , and as an essayist the autobiographical compilation Something to Declare . She has achieved critical and commercial success on an international scale and many literary critics regard her to be one of the most significant contemporary Latina writers.

#12984

Mari Matsuda

#12995

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Mari J. Matsuda is an American lawyer, activist, and law professor at the William S. Richardson School of Law at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. She was the first tenured female Asian American law professor in the United States, at University of California, Los Angeles School of Law in 1998 and one of the leading voices in critical race theory since its inception. Matsuda returned to Richardson in the fall of 2008. Prior to her return, Matsuda was a professor at the UCLA School of Law and Georgetown University Law Center, specializing in the fields of torts, constitutional law, legal his...

#12985

Gerald S. Lesser

#12996

Overall Influence

1926 - 2010 (84 years)

Gerald Samuel Lesser was an American psychologist who served on the faculty of Harvard University from 1963 until his retirement in 1998. Lesser was one of the chief advisers to the Children's Television Workshop in the development and content of the educational programming included in the children's television program Sesame Street. At Harvard, he was chair of the university's Human Development Program for 20 years, which focused on cross-cultural studies of child rearing, and studied the effects of media on young children. In 1974, he wrote Children and Television: Lessons From Sesame Street, which chronicled how Sesame Street was developed and put on the air.

#12986

Paul Daniels

#12997

Overall Influence

1938 - 2016 (78 years)

Newton Edward Daniels , known professionally as Paul Daniels, was an English magician and television presenter. He achieved international fame through his television series The Paul Daniels Magic Show, which ran on the BBC from 1979 to 1994.

#12987

Louis Reichardt

Louis Reichardt

#12998

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Louis French Reichardt is a noted American neuroscientist and mountaineer, the first American to summit both Everest and K2. He was also director of the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative, the largest non-federal supporter of scientific research into autism spectrum disorders and is an emeritus professor of physiology and biochemistry/biophysics at UCSF, where he studied neuroscience. The character of Harold Jameson, U.C.S.F. biophysicist and mountaineer in the film K2, is based on Reichardt, though the events of his actual 1978 K2 attempt with Jim Wickwire bear little resemblance ...

#12988

Dorothy Roberts

Dorothy Roberts

#12999

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Dorothy E. Roberts is an American sociologist, law professor, and social justice advocate. She is the Penn Integrates Knowledge Professor, George A. Weiss University Professor, and inaugural Raymond Pace and Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights at the University of Pennsylvania. She writes and lectures on gender, race, and class in legal issues. Her focuses include reproductive health, child welfare, and bioethics. In 2023, she was elected to the American Philosophical Society. She has published over 80 articles and essays in books and scholarly journals, including Harvar...

#12989

James Davison Hunter

#13000

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

James Davison Hunter is an American sociologist and originator of the term "Culture Wars" in his 1991 book Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America. Hunter is the LaBrosse-Levinson Distinguished Professor of Religion, Culture, and Social Theory at the University of Virginia and the founder and executive director of the university's Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. He is also a senior fellow at the Trinity Forum.

#12990

Ada Deer

#13001

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (91 years)

Ada Elizabeth Deer was an American scholar and civil servant who was a member of the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin and a Native American advocate. As an activist she opposed the federal termination of tribes from the 1950s. During the Clinton administration, Deer served as Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs.

#12991

Rick Levin

#13002

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Richard Charles Levin is an American economist and academic administrator. From 1993 to 2013, he was the 22nd President of Yale University. From March 2014 to June 2017, he was Chief Executive Officer of Coursera.

#12992

Arthur Earl Walker

#13003

Overall Influence

1907 - 1995 (88 years)

Arthur Earl Walker was a Canadian-born American neurosurgeon, neuroscientist and epileptologist remembered for the eponymous syndromes Dandy–Walker syndrome, Dandy–Walker-like syndrome and Walker–Warburg syndrome. During his career he published over 400 research articles and 8 books.

#12993

Robert Triffin

#13004

Overall Influence

1911 - 1993 (82 years)

Robert, Baron Triffin was a Belgian-American economist best known for his critique of the Bretton Woods system of fixed currency exchange rates. His critique became known later as Triffin's dilemma.

#12994

Graham Nash

#13005

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Graham William Nash is an English-American musician, singer and songwriter. He is known for his light tenor voice and for his contributions as a member of the Hollies and Crosby, Stills & Nash. Nash is a photography collector and a published photographer. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Crosby, Stills & Nash in 1997 and as a member of the Hollies in 2010. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in the 2010 Birthday Honours List for services to music and to charity.

#12995

Ennio de Giorgi

Ennio de Giorgi

#13006

Overall Influence

1928 - 1996 (68 years)

Ennio De Giorgi was an Italian mathematician who worked on partial differential equations and the foundations of mathematics. Mathematical work De Giorgi's first work was in geometric measure theory, on the topic of the sets of finite perimeters which he called in 1958 as Caccioppoli sets, after his mentor and friend. His definition applied some important analytic tools and the De Giorgi's theorem for the sets established a new tool for set theory as well as his own works. This achievement not only brought Ennio immediate recognition but displayed his ability to attack problems using complete...

#12996

Michele Norris

#13007

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Michele L. Norris is an American journalist. Since 2019, Norris has worked as an opinion columnist with The Washington Post. She is best known for co-hosting National Public Radio's evening news program All Things Considered from 2002 to 2011. She was the first African-American female host for NPR. Before that Norris was a correspondent for ABC News, as well as the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. Norris is also a member of the Peabody Awards board of directors, which is presented by the University of Georgia's Henry W. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication.

#12997

Sharon Zukin

#13008

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Sharon L. Zukin is an American professor of sociology who specializes in modern urban life. She is a professor emerita at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. She has been a fellow of the Advanced Research Collaborative at the CUNY Graduate Center and chair of the sections on community and urban sociology and consumers and consumption of the American Sociological Association Consumers and Consumption Section, as well as a visiting professor at Tongji University , the University of Amsterdam, and the University of Western Sydney.

#12998

Loet Leydesdorff

Loet Leydesdorff

#13009

Overall Influence

1948 - 2023 (75 years)

Louis André Leydesdorff Biography Leydesdorff was born in 1948 in Batavia , then the capital of the Dutch East Indies. He received a B.Sc. in chemistry in 1969, a M.Sc. biochemistry in 1973, and an M.A. in philosophy in 1977. In 1984 he obtained his Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Amsterdam.

#12999

Sunil Gavaskar

#13010

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Sunil Manohar Gavaskar is an Indian cricket commentator and former cricketer who represented India and Bombay from 1971 to 1987. Gavaskar is acknowledged as one of the greatest opening batsmen of all time.

#13000

Asher Cohen

#13011

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Asher Cohen is an Israeli psychologist. He has been the 14th President of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem since September 1, 2017, and holds the university's Samuel Sturman Chair in Psychology. Biography Asher Cohen graduated from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem with a B.A. in Economics and an M.A. in Psychology. He completed his doctoral and post-doctoral studies at the University of Oregon.

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions