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

#13851

Sigourney Weaver

Sigourney Weaver

#13862

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Susan Alexandra "Sigourney" Weaver is an American actress. A figure in science fiction and popular culture, she has received various accolades, including a British Academy Film Award, two Golden Globe Awards, and a Grammy Award, in addition to nominations for three Academy Awards, four Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Tony Award. In 2003, she was voted Number 20 in Channel 4's countdown of the 100 greatest movie stars of all time.

#13852

Yehoshua Sobol

#13863

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Yehoshua Sobol, sometimes written Joshua Sobol , is an Israeli playwright, writer, and theatre director. Biography Yehoshua Sobol was born in Tel Mond. His mother's family fled the pogroms in Europe in 1922 and his father's family immigrated from Poland in 1934 to escape the Nazis. Sobol is married to Edna, set and costume designer. They have a daughter, Neta, and a son, Yahli Sobol, a singer and writer. Sobol studied at the Sorbonne, Paris, and graduated with a diploma in philosophy. Born to a secular Jewish family, he identifies as an atheist.

#13853

Gerson Goldhaber

Gerson Goldhaber

#13864

Overall Influence

1924 - 2010 (86 years)

Gerson Goldhaber was a German-born American particle physicist and astrophysicist. He was one of the discoverers of the J/ψ meson which confirmed the existence of the charm quark. He worked at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory with the Supernova Cosmology Project, and was a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley as well as a professor at Berkeley's graduate school in astrophysics.

#13854

Bill de Blasio

#13865

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Bill de Blasio is an American politician who was the 109th mayor of New York City from 2014 to 2021. A member of the Democratic Party, he held the office of New York City Public Advocate from 2010 to 2013.

#13855

Michael D. Cohen

#13866

Overall Influence

1945 - 2013 (68 years)

Michael Cohen was the William D. Hamilton Collegiate Professor of Complex Systems, Information and Public Policy at the University of Michigan. Early life and education Cohen received his B.A. in History at Stanford University in 1966, and his Ph.D. in Social Science at the University of California, Irvine in 1972.

#13856

Paul Locatelli

#13867

Overall Influence

1938 - 2010 (72 years)

Paul Leo Locatelli, S.J. was an American Jesuit priest, academic and certified public accountant. Locatelli served as the president of Santa Clara University from 1988 until 2008 before becoming chancellor of Santa Clara in 2008. He also held the post of Secretary of Higher Education for the Society of Jesus in Rome.

#13857

Victor Veselago

Victor Veselago

#13868

Overall Influence

1929 - 2018 (89 years)

Victor Georgievich Veselago was a Soviet/Russian physicist, doctor of physical and mathematical sciences, and a university professor. In 1967, he was the first to publish a theoretical analysis of materials with negative permittivity, ε, and permeability, μ.

#13858

Rodney Hill

#13869

Overall Influence

1921 - 2011 (90 years)

Rodney Hill FRS was an applied mathematician and a former Professor of Mechanics of Solids at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. Career In 1953 he was appointed Professor of Applied Mathematics at the University of Nottingham. His 1950 The Mathematical Theory of Plasticity work forms the foundation of plasticity theory. Hill is widely regarded as among the foremost contributors to the foundations of solid mechanics over the second half of the 20th century. His early work was central to founding the mathematical theory of plasticity. This deep interest led eventually to general studies of...

#13859

Lev Gumilev

#13870

Overall Influence

1912 - 1992 (80 years)

Lev Nikolayevich Gumilev was a Soviet and Russian historian, ethnologist, anthropologist and translator. He had a reputation for his highly unorthodox theories of ethnogenesis and historiosophy. He was an exponent of Eurasianism. According to geographer Mark Bassin, Lev Gumilev, whose books have now sold millions of copies, can be compared in terms of influence to Herodotus, Karl Marx, Oswald Spengler or Albert Einstein. The "Eurasian vision" of president Vladimir Putin has allegedly been influenced by Gumilev's ideas.

#13860

Rubens Ricupero

#13871

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Rubens Ricupero is a Brazilian academic, economist, bureaucrat and diplomat. He served as the fifth Secretary General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development from September 1995 to September 2004.

#13861

Kerry Emanuel

#13872

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Kerry Andrew Emanuel is an American professor of meteorology currently working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge. In particular he has specialized in atmospheric convection and the mechanisms acting to intensify hurricaness.

#13862

Rediet Abebe

#13873

Overall Influence

1991 - Present (35 years)

Rediet Abebe is an Ethiopian computer scientist working in algorithms and artificial intelligence. She is an assistant professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. Previously, she was a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows.

#13863

Louis Simpson

#13874

Overall Influence

1923 - 2012 (89 years)

Louis Aston Marantz Simpson was an American poet born in Jamaica. He won the 1964 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his work At the End of the Open Road. Life and career Simpson was born in Jamaica, the son of Rosalind and Aston Simpson, a lawyer. His father was of Scottish and African ancestry. His mother was born in Russia . At the age of 17, he emigrated to the United States and began attending Columbia University, where he studied under Mark Van Doren. During World War II, from 1943 to 1945 he was a member of the elite 101st Airborne Division and would fight in France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany.

#13864

Arvind

#13875

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Arvind is the Johnson Professor of Computer Science and Engineering in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and the Association for Computing Machinery . He was also elected as a member into the National Academy of Engineering in 2008 for contributions to dataflow and multithread computing and the development of tools for the high-level synthesis of digital electronics hardware.

#13865

Andrew Bailey

#13876

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Andrew John Bailey is a British central banker and Governor of the Bank of England since 16 March 2020. Previously he served as the Chief Cashier of the Bank of England under Mervyn King from January 2004 until April 2011, Deputy Governor of the Bank of England for Prudential Regulation under Mark Carney from April 2013 to July 2016 and Chief Executive of the Financial Conduct Authority from 2016 to 2020.

#13866

Lawrence C. Becker

#13877

Overall Influence

1939 - 2018 (79 years)

Lawrence C. Becker was an American philosopher working mainly in the areas of ethics and social, political, and legal philosophy. Work Becker is the author of books and journal articles on justice, Stoicism and Modern Stoicism, reciprocity, property rights, and metaethics. He was an associate editor of the journal Ethics from 1985–2000, and the editor, with the librarian Charlotte B. Becker, of two editions of the Encyclopedia of Ethics.

#13867

Thomas A. McCarthy

#13878

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Thomas McCarthy is John Shaffer Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Northwestern University. Before joining Northwestern in 1985, he taught for four years at Munich University and for thirteen years at Boston University. After retiring from Northwestern in 2006, he served for three years as William H. Orrick Visiting Professor at Yale University. Over the course of his academic career, McCarthy's work was supported by grants and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Guggenheim Foundation.

#13868

Spencer R. Weart

Spencer R. Weart

#13879

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Spencer R. Weart is the former director of the Center for History of Physics of the American Institute of Physics from 1971 until his retirement in 2009. Life Originally trained as a physicist, he is now a historian of science. He earned his B.A. in Physics at Cornell University in 1963 and a Ph.D. in Physics and Astrophysics at the University of Colorado, Boulder, in 1968. He then did postdoctoral studies at the Hale Observatories and California Institute of Technology, publishing papers on solar physics; from 1971 to 1974 he studied history of science in the University of California, Berkeley.

#13869

Alex Colville

#13880

Overall Influence

1920 - 2013 (93 years)

David Alexander Colville, LL. D. was a Canadian painter and printmaker. Early life and war artist Born in 1920 in Toronto, Ontario, Colville moved with his family at age seven to St. Catharines, and then to Amherst, Nova Scotia, in 1929. He attended Mount Allison University from 1938 to 1942, where he studied under Canadian Post-Impressionists like Stanley Royle and Sarah Hart, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts.

#13870

Robert Rodriguez

Robert Rodriguez

#13881

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Robert Anthony Rodriguez is an American filmmaker, composer, and visual effects supervisor. He shoots, edits, produces, and scores many of his films in Mexico and in his home state of Texas. Rodriguez directed the 1992 action film El Mariachi, which was a commercial success after grossing $2.6 million against a budget of $7,000 . The film spawned two sequels known collectively as the Mexico Trilogy: Desperado and Once Upon a Time in Mexico.

#13871

Ralph Fiennes

#13882

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Ralph Nathaniel Twisleton-Wykeham-Fiennes is an English actor, film producer, and director. A Shakespeare interpreter, he excelled onstage at the Royal National Theatre before having further success at the Royal Shakespeare Company. Widely regarded as one of Britain’s most well-known and popular actors, he has received various accolades including a BAFTA Award and a Tony Award, as well as nominations for two Academy Awards and an Emmy Award.

#13872

Dudley Andrew

#13883

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

James Dudley Andrew is an American film theorist. He is R. Selden Rose Professor of Film and Comparative Literature at Yale University, where he has taught since the year 2000. Before moving to Yale, he taught for thirty years at the University of Iowa. Andrew has been called, on the occasion of one of his invited lecture series, "one of the most influential scholars in the areas of theory, history and criticism". He particularly specializes in world cinema, film theory and aesthetics, and French cinema. He has also written on Japanese cinema, especially the work of Kenji Mizoguchi. He has b...

#13873

Robin West

#13884

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Robin West is the Frederick J. Haas Professor of Law and Philosophy emerita at the Georgetown University Law Center. West's research is primarily concerned with feminist legal theory, constitutional law and theory, philosophy of law, and the law and literature movement.

#13874

Mendu Rammohan Rao

#13885

Overall Influence

Prof. Mendu Rammohan Rao was the Dean Emeritus of Indian School of Business , Hyderabad. He was Provost at the Woxsen School of Business, Hyderabad. Biography He has a PhD in Industrial Administration from Carnegie Mellon University. He holds a Bachelors in Engineering from College of Engineering, Guindy, a Master in Engineering and Master of Science in Industrial Engineering and Industrial Management.

#13875

Christoph Gerber

Christoph Gerber

#13886

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Christoph Gerber is a titular professor at the Department of Physics, University of Basel, Switzerland. He is the co-inventor of the atomic force microscope . He was a founding member and director for scientific communication of the NCCR . He was formerly a research staff member in nanoscale science at the IBM Research Laboratory in Rueschlikon, Switzerland, and has served as a project leader in various programs of the Swiss National Science Foundation.

#13876

Huw Price

#13887

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Huw Price is an Australian philosopher, formerly the Bertrand Russell Professor in the Faculty of Philosophy, Cambridge, and a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge. He was previously Challis Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Centre for Time at the University of Sydney, and before that Professor of Logic and Metaphysics at the University of Edinburgh. He is also one of three founders and the Academic Director of the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge, and the Academic Director of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence.

#13877

Jaan Puhvel

#13888

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (94 years)

Jaan Puhvel is an Estonian comparative linguist and comparative mythologist who specializes in Indo-European studies. Born in Estonia, Puhvel fled his country with his family in 1944 following the Soviet occupation of the Baltic states, and eventually ended up in Canada. Gaining his Ph.D. in comparative linguistics at Harvard University, he became a professor of classical languages, Indo-European studies and Hittite at the University of California, Los Angeles , where he founded the Center for the Study of Comparative Folklore and Mythology and was Chairman of the Department of Classics.

#13878

Josephine Donovan

#13889

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Josephine Donovan is an American scholar of comparative literature who is a professor emerita of English in the Department of English at the University of Maine, Orono. Her research and expertise has covered feminist theory, feminist criticism, animal ethics, and both early modern and American literature with a special focus on American writer Sarah Orne Jewett and the local colorists. She recently extended her study of local color literature to the European tradition. Along with Marti Kheel, Carol J. Adams, and others, Donovan introduced ecofeminist care theory, rooted in cultural feminism, to the field of animal ethics.

#13879

Marci Shore

#13890

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Marci Shore is an American associate professor of intellectual history at Yale University, where she specializes in the history of literary and political engagement with Marxism and phenomenology. Shore is the author of Caviar and Ashes: A Warsaw Generation's Life and Death in Marxism, 1918–1968, a milieu biography of Polish and Polish-Jewish writers drawn to Marxism in the twentieth century; and of The Taste of Ashes, a study of the presence of the communist and Nazi past in today's Eastern Europe. She translated Michał Głowiński's Holocaust memoir, The Black Seasons. Shore married Timothy D.

#13880

Elliott Mendelson

#13891

Overall Influence

1931 - 2020 (89 years)

Elliott Mendelson was an American logician. He was a professor of mathematics at Queens College of the City University of New York, and the Graduate Center, CUNY. He was Jr. Fellow, Society of Fellows, Harvard University, 1956–58.

#13881

Tim van Gelder

#13892

Overall Influence

Tim van Gelder is the co-founder of Austhink Software, an Australian software development company, and the Managing Director of Austhink Consulting. He was born in Australia, and was educated at the University of Melbourne . He went on to receive his PhD from the University of Pittsburgh . He has held academic positions at Indiana University and the Australian National University before returning to Melbourne as an Australian Research Council QEII Research Fellow. In 1998, he transitioned to part-time academic work allowing him to pursue private training and consulting, and in 2005 began working full-time at Austhink Software.

#13882

Geoffrey Jones

#13893

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Geoffrey G. Jones is a British-born business historian. He became a US citizen in 2010. He is currently Isidor Straus Professor of Business History at the Harvard Business School. The previous holders of this Chair, which was the first in the world in business history being founded in 1927, included Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. and Thomas K. McCraw.

#13883

Christine Hayes

#13894

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Christine Hayes is an American academic and scholar of Jewish studies, currently serving as the Sterling Professor of Religious Studies in Classical Judaica at Yale University, specializing in Talmudic and Midrashic studies and Classical Judaica.

#13884

Nigel Farage

#13895

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Nigel Paul Farage is a British broadcaster and former politician who was Leader of the UK Independence Party from 2006 to 2009 and 2010 to 2016 and Leader of the Brexit Party from 2019 to 2021. He served as Member of the European Parliament for South East England from 1999 until the United Kingdom's exit from the European Union in 2020. He was the host of The Nigel Farage Show, a radio phone-in on the Global-owned talk radio station LBC, from 2017 to 2020. Farage is currently the Honorary President of Reform UK and a presenter for GB News.

#13885

Mark Elliott

#13896

Overall Influence

Mark C. Elliott is the Mark Schwartz Professor of Chinese and Inner Asian History at Harvard University, where he is Vice Provost for International Affairs. He is also a seminal figure of the school called the New Qing History.

#13886

Sam Querrey

#13897

Overall Influence

1987 - Present (39 years)

Samuel Austin Querrey is an American professional pickleball and former tennis player. He reached a career-high singles ranking of world No. 11 achieved on February 26, 2018, and won ten ATP singles titles. Known for his powerful serve, Querrey holds the record for consecutive service aces in a match with 10. He was also a capable doubles player, with five ATP doubles titles and a career-high doubles ranking of No. 23 achieved on May 17, 2010.

#13887

John McLaughlin

John McLaughlin

#13898

Overall Influence

1927 - 2016 (89 years)

John Joseph McLaughlin was an American television personality and political commentator. He created, produced, and hosted the political commentary series The McLaughlin Group. He also hosted and produced John McLaughlin's One on One, which ran from 1984 to 2013.

#13888

Thorsten Hens

#13899

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Thorsten Hens is a German and Swiss economist and finance academic. According to the Handelsblatt ranking, Hens is among the top 10 economics professors in the German-speaking area . Biography Hens is Swiss Finance Institute Professor of Financial Economics and director of the Swiss Banking Institute at the University of Zürich, Switzerland as well as a Fellow of Centre for Economic Policy Research and an Adjunct Professor of Finance at the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration in Bergen.

#13889

Jo Jorgensen

#13900

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Jo Jorgensen is an American libertarian political activist and academic. Jorgensen was the Libertarian Party's nominee for president of the United States in the 2020 election, in which she finished third in the popular vote with about 1.9 million votes, 1.2% of the national total. She was previously the party's nominee for vice president in the 1996 election, as Harry Browne's running mate. She is a full-time lecturer of psychology at Clemson University.

#13890

Mamadou Diouf

#13901

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Mamadou Diouf is the Leitner Family Professor of African Studies, the Director of Institute for African Studies, and a professor of Western African history at Columbia University. He also serves as director of the Institute of African Studies at the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University and has been instrumental in its recent reorganization. Diouf holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Paris-Sorbonne. Prior to teaching at Columbia, he taught at the University of Michigan and before that at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, Senegal. Diouf also serves on...

#13891

Hugh Jones

#13902

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Hugh Jones is a British record producer with many important post-punk, new wave and alternative rock albums to his credit. Career In the early 1970s, Jones worked as an apprentice engineer in IBC Studios in Central London, while acting as lead singer in the band Mistral. He made his name in the early 1980s, with a jangly sound that was better received than those of many of his contemporaries. Though many of his early clients were big-name acts—Echo & the Bunnymen, the Sound, Modern English, and the Damned, for example—his recent production credits have been more esoteric, though many admire hi...

#13892

Graham Harvey

#13903

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Graham Harvey is an English religious studies scholar. He specialises in modern Paganism, indigenous religions and animism. Life and work Graham Harvey was born in 1959. He obtained a Ph.D. title at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in 1991 on a dissertation about group identity in ancient Jewish literature. From 1991 to 1995 he taught religious studies in Newcastle. From 1996 to 2003 he worked as reader and principal lecturer in religious studies at the King Alfred's College, Winchester. Since 2003 he works at the Open University where he is a professor and was head of the religious stud...

#13893

Nick Fuentes

#13904

Overall Influence

1998 - Present (28 years)

Nicholas Joseph Fuentes is an American far-right political commentator and live streamer who is known for his white supremacist, misogynistic, homophobic, antisemitic, and islamophobic views. A former YouTuber, his channel was permanently terminated in February 2020 for violating YouTube's hate speech policy. Fuentes has promoted conspiracy theories against Jewish people, and has denied the Holocaust. Fuentes identifies as a member of the incel movement, as a supporter of authoritarian government, and as a Catholic integralist and Christian nationalist.

#13894

Benjamin Schumacher

#13905

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Benjamin "Ben" Schumacher is an American theoretical physicist, working mostly in the field of quantum information theory. He discovered a way of interpreting quantum states as information. He came up with a way of compressing the information in a state, and storing the information in a smaller number of states. This is now known as Schumacher compression. This was the quantum analog of Shannon's noiseless coding theorem, and it helped to start the field known as quantum information theory.

#13895

Arthur Zajonc

#13906

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Arthur Guy Zajonc is a physicist and the author of several books related to science, mind, and spirit; one of these is based on dialogues about quantum mechanics with the Dalai Lama. Zajonc, professor emeritus at Amherst College as of 2012, has been teaching there since 1978. He has served as the General Secretary of the Anthroposophical Society in America. From January 2012 to June 2015 he was president of the Mind and Life Institute.

#13896

Fred Saberhagen

Fred Saberhagen

#13907

Overall Influence

1930 - 2007 (77 years)

Fred Thomas Saberhagen was an American science fiction and fantasy author most famous for his Berserker series of science fiction short stories and novels. Saberhagen also wrote a series of vampire novels in which the famous Dracula is the main protagonist, and a series of post-apocalyptic mytho-magical novels beginning with his popular Empire of the East series and continuing through a long series of Swords and Lost Swords novels. Saberhagen died of cancer, in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

#13897

Jack Straw

#13908

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

John Whitaker Straw is a British politician who served in the Cabinet from 1997 to 2010 under the Labour governments of Sir Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. He held two of the traditional Great Offices of State, as Home Secretary from 1997 to 2001, and Foreign Secretary from 2001 to 2006 under Blair. He was a Member of Parliament for Blackburn from 1979 to 2015.

#13898

Abul Hussam

#13909

Overall Influence

Abul Hussam is the inventor of the Sono arsenic filter. He is a chemistry professor at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, and a member of advisory board at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology.

#13899

Jim Harbaugh

#13910

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

James Joseph Harbaugh is an American football coach and former quarterback who is the 20th and current head football coach of the Michigan Wolverines. He played college football at Michigan from 1983 to 1986. He played in the National Football League for 14 seasons from 1987 to 2000 with his longest tenure as a player with the Chicago Bears. He served as the head coach of the San Diego Toreros , the Stanford Cardinal , and the NFL's San Francisco 49ers . In 2015, Harbaugh returned to his alma mater, the University of Michigan.

#13900

Brian Winston

#13911

Overall Influence

1941 - 2022 (81 years)

Brian Norman Winston was a British journalist who was the first holder of the Lincoln Professorship at the University of Lincoln, United Kingdom. He was a Pro Vice Chancellor for 2005–2006 and the former dean of Media and Humanities. He was awarded an Emmy in 1985 for documentary script writing.

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions