Search People Result | Academic Influence

Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines

Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.

Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.

We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.

To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).

Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …

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School

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Ranking

List of the most influential people

#14001

Frank Turek

#14012

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Frank Turek is an American apologist, author, public speaker, and radio host. He is best known as the founder and president of Christian apologetics ministry CrossExamined.org. Turek co-authored two books with Christian philosopher Norman Geisler. In addition, Turek has authored two of his own books .

#14002

Hugh Jackman

#14013

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Hugh Michael Jackman is an Australian actor. Beginning in theatre and television, Jackman landed his breakthrough role as Wolverine in the X-Men film series , a role that earned him the Guinness World Record for "longest career as a live-action Marvel character", until his record was surpassed by Patrick Stewart as Charles Xavier in May 2022. He has received various accolades, including a Primetime Emmy Award, a Grammy Award and two Tony Awards, along with nominations for an Academy Award and a British Academy Film Award. Jackman was appointed a Companion of the Order of Australia in 2019.

#14003

John Kneller

#14014

Overall Influence

1916 - 2009 (93 years)

John William Kneller, OAP was an English-American French language professor and scholar, and the fifth President of Brooklyn College. Biography Kneller was born in Oldham, England, to John W. Kneller and Margaret Ann Truslove. He had four older brothers. He immigrated to Worcester, Massachusetts, when he was five years old. He later became a U.S. citizen.

#14004

Eric Weinstein

#14015

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Eric Ross Weinstein is an American hedge fund director and podcast host. He was the joint managing director for Thiel Capital from 2013 until 2022. He has a PhD in mathematical physics from Harvard.

#14005

Ayyappa Paniker

Ayyappa Paniker

#14016

Overall Influence

1930 - 2006 (76 years)

Dr. K. Ayyappa Paniker, sometimes spelt "Ayyappa Panicker" , was a Malayalam poet, literary critic, and an academic and a scholar in modern and post-modern literary theories as well as ancient Indian aesthetics and literary traditions. He was one of the pioneers of modernism in Malayalam poetry, where his seminal works like Kurukshethram , is considered a turning point in Malayalam poetry. Many of Ayyappa Paniker's poems and his several essays were an important influence on later generations of Malayalam writers.

#14006

John Crawford

#14017

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

John H. Crawford is an American computer engineer. Career During a long career at Intel starting in 1977, he was the chief architect of the Intel 80386 and Intel 80486 microprocessors. He also co-managed the design of the Intel P5 Pentium microprocessor family. Crawford was the recipient of the 1995 Eckert–Mauchly Award. He was awarded the IEEE Ernst Weber Engineering Leadership Recognition in 1997.

#14007

Gian Biagio Conte

Gian Biagio Conte

#14018

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Gian Biagio Conte is an Italian classicist and professor of Latin Literature at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa. Life Conte completed his studies in classical philology at the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa, where he was influenced by scholars such as Antonio La Penna, Sebastiano Timpanaro and . In particular with the first of these, he first had a fruitful period of collaboration, but then broke contact abruptly in an exchange of letters. Conte also went abroad to study in Munich with Friedrich Klingner and in Paris. At the age of 30, he was made professor of Latin Literature at the U...

#14008

Ajip Rosidi

#14019

Overall Influence

1938 - 2020 (82 years)

Ajip Rosidi was an Indonesian poet and short story writer. As of 1983 he had published 326 works in 22 different magazines. Biography Rosidi was born on 31 January 1938, in Jatiwangi, Majalengka, West Java. He attended the School of the People, Jatiwangi, in 1950; District VIII Junior High School Jakarta in 1953; and Taman Madya High School, Taman.Siswa Jakarta in 1956. He began his literary career at the age of fourteen years. Since 1952, his works began to appear in magazines such as "Indonesia", "Indonesia Pulpit", "Arena/Ploy", "Confrontation" and "Zenith Platform".

#14009

Jörg Schlaich

#14020

Overall Influence

1934 - 2021 (87 years)

Jörg Schlaich was a German structural engineer and is known internationally for his ground-breaking work in the creative design of bridges, long-span roofs, and other complex structures. He was a co-founder of the structural engineering and consulting firm Schlaich Bergermann Partner.

#14010

Michael F. Jacobson

Michael F. Jacobson

#14021

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Michael F. Jacobson , who holds a Ph.D. in microbiology from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is an American scientist and nutrition advocate. Jacobson co-founded the Center for Science in the Public Interest in 1971, along with two fellow scientists he met while working at the Center for the Study of Responsive Law in Washington, DC. When his colleagues left CSPI in 1977, Jacobson became its executive director. In 2017 he was replaced as the executive director by Peter Lurie and held the position of Senior Scientist; he remained on the board of directors of the organization until 2022.

#14011

Basil Hetzel

#14022

Overall Influence

1922 - 2017 (95 years)

Basil Stuart Hetzel was an Australian medical researcher who made a major contribution to combating iodine deficiency, a major cause of goitre and cretinism worldwide. Early life and education Hetzel was born in London to Elinor Hetzel and Kenneth Stuart Hetzel, an anaesthetist. Hetzel's parents were originally from South Australia but in London at the time while Kenneth worked at the University College Hospital. They returned to Adelaide in 1925. There he, along with his brother Peter , was schooled at King's College and St Peter's College, Adelaide.

#14012

Marti Hearst

#14023

Overall Influence

Marti Hearst is a professor in the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley. She did early work in corpus-based computational linguistics, including some of the first work in automating sentiment analysis, and word sense disambiguation. She invented an algorithm that became known as "Hearst patterns" which applies lexico-syntactic patterns to recognize hyponymy relations with high accuracy in large text collections, including an early application of it to WordNet; this algorithm is widely used in commercial text mining applications including ontology learning. Hearst al...

#14013

Mark Zbikowski

#14024

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Mark "Zibo" Joseph Zbikowski is a former Microsoft Architect and an early computer hacker. He started working at the company only a few years after its inception, leading efforts in MS-DOS, OS/2, Cairo and Windows NT. In 2006, he was honored for 25 years of service with the company, the third employee to reach this milestone, after Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. He retired the same year from Microsoft.

#14014

David Daiches

#14025

Overall Influence

1912 - 2005 (93 years)

David Daiches was a Scottish literary historian and literary critic, scholar and writer. He wrote extensively on English literature, Scottish literature and Scottish culture. Early life He was born in Sunderland, into a Jewish family with a Lithuanian background—the subject of his 1956 memoir, Two Worlds: An Edinburgh Jewish Childhood. He moved to Edinburgh while still a young child, about the end of the First World War, where his father, Rev Dr Salis Daiches was rabbi to Edinburgh's Jewish community, and founder of the city's branch of B'nai Brith.

#14015

David William Rhind

#14026

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

David William Rhind is a British geographer and expert on geographic information systems . He was Vice-Chancellor of City University, London, until July 2007. Rhind graduated in geography and geology from the University of Bristol in 1965 and received a PhD in geomorphology from the University of Edinburgh in 1969.

#14016

AnaLouise Keating

#14027

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

AnaLouise Keating is an American academic who is professor of Multicultural Women's and Gender Studies at Texas Woman's University in Denton, Texas. She is also the director of the department's PhD program. Keating's multiple books, essays, and edited collections primarily focus on transformation studies, U.S. women-of-color theories, Gloria Anzaldúa and pedagogy.

#14017

J. Cole

#14028

Overall Influence

1985 - Present (41 years)

Jermaine Lamarr Cole is an American rapper and record producer. Born on a military base in Germany and raised in Fayetteville, North Carolina, Cole initially gained attention as a rapper following the release of his debut mixtape, The Come Up, in early 2007. Intent on further pursuing a musical career, he signed to Jay-Z's Roc Nation in 2009 and released two additional mixtapes: The Warm Up and Friday Night Lights , both to critical acclaim as he garnered a wider following.

#14018

Tom Daschle

#14029

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Thomas Andrew "Tom" Daschle is an American politician and lobbyist who represented South Dakota in the United States Senate from 1987 to 2005. A member of the Democratic Party, he led the Senate Democratic Caucus during the final ten years of his tenure, during which time he served as Senate Minority Leader and Majority Leader.

#14019

Modesto Maidique

Modesto Maidique

#14030

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Modesto Alex "Mitch" Maidique was the fourth president of Florida International University , a public university in the United States, whose main campus is named after him. Appointed in 1986, Maidique was the longest-serving university president in Florida and the second longest-serving research university president in the United States . On November 14, 2008, Maidique presented his resignation to the FIU Board of trustees. On April 25, 2009, Mark B. Rosenberg was chosen to succeed Maidique and assumed office on August 3, 2009.

#14020

Donald W. Loveland

#14031

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (92 years)

Donald W. Loveland is a professor emeritus of computer science at Duke University who specializes in artificial intelligence. He is well known for the Davis–Putnam–Logemann–Loveland algorithm.

#14021

Carlton Fisk

#14032

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Carlton Ernest Fisk , nicknamed "Pudge" and "the Commander", is an American former professional baseball player. He played in Major League Baseball as a catcher from 1969 to 1993 for the Boston Red Sox and Chicago White Sox . In 1972, he was the first player to be unanimously voted American League Rookie of the Year. Fisk is best known for his game-winning home run in the 12th inning of Game 6 of the 1975 World Series, during which he memorably waved his arms hoping for the batted ball to remain fair.

#14022

Jim Clark

#14033

Overall Influence

1922 - 2007 (85 years)

James Gardner Clark, Jr. was the sheriff of Dallas County, Alabama, United States from 1955 to 1966. He was one of the officials responsible for the violent arrests of civil rights protestors during the Selma to Montgomery marches of 1965, and is remembered as a racist whose brutal tactics included using cattle prods against unarmed civil rights supporters.

#14023

Sethuraman Panchanathan

Sethuraman Panchanathan

#14034

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Sethuraman Panchanathan is an Indian–American computer scientist and academic administrator, and the 15th Director of National Science Foundation since June 2020. He previously served at Arizona State University as executive vice president of knowledge enterprise development and chief research and innovation officer. He was also director of the Center for Cognitive Ubiquitous Computing , Foundation Chair of Computing and Informatics at the university, and a professor in the School of Computing, Informatics, and Decision Systems Engineering , part of the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering.

#14024

Jon Crowcroft

#14035

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Jonathan Andrew Crowcroft is the Marconi Professor of Communications Systems in the Department of Computer Science and Technology, University of Cambridge, a Visiting Professor at the Department of Computing at Imperial College London, and the chair of the programme committee at the Alan Turing Institute.

#14025

Stefan Voigt

#14036

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Stefan Voigt is a German economist and one of the Directors of the University of Hamburg's Institute of Law and Economics. He is also a Fellow of CESifo in Munich. Previous positions include chairs at the Philipps-University Marburg, the University of Kassel, the Ruhr University Bochum, a fellowship at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, a senior fellowship at the Krupp Kolleg in Greifswald and a research fellowship at the Max Planck Institute of Economics in Jena.

#14026

Brian Davies

#14037

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Brian Evan Anthony Davies is a British philosopher, Roman Catholic priest, and friar. He is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, Fordham University , and author of An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion, now in its fourth English edition, which has been translated into five languages.

#14027

Travis Barker

#14038

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Travis Landon Barker is an American musician who is the drummer for the rock band Blink-182. He has collaborated with hip hop artists, is a member of the rap rock group Transplants, cofounded the rock band +44, and joined Box Car Racer, Antemasque and Goldfinger. Barker was a frequent collaborator with the late DJ AM, and together they formed TRV$DJAM. Due to his fame, Rolling Stone referred to him as "punk's first superstar drummer" as well as one of the 100 greatest drummers of all time.

#14028

Farrokh Saidi

#14039

Overall Influence

1929 - Present (97 years)

Farrokh Saidi is an Iranian surgeon, academician, former Under-Secretary for Medical Education and Health Services of Iran, and former Dean of Medical School, Pahlavi University School of Medicine , Shiraz, Iran.

#14029

Brian Spalding

#14040

Overall Influence

1923 - 2016 (93 years)

Dudley Brian Spalding, FRS FREng was Professor of Heat Transfer and Head of the Computational Fluid Dynamics Unit at Imperial College, London. He was one of the founders of computational fluid dynamics and an internationally recognized contributor to the fields of heat transfer, fluid mechanics and combustion. He created the practice of CFD – its application to problems of interest to engineers. Most of today’s commercially available CFD software tools trace their origin to the work done by Spalding's group in the decade spanning the mid-60s and mid-70s. Spalding became a Fellow of the Royal...

#14030

David Macaulay

#14041

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

David Macaulay is a British-born American illustrator and writer. His works include Cathedral , The Way Things Work , and The New Way Things Work . His illustrations have been featured in nonfiction books combining text and illustrations explaining architecture, design, and engineering, and he has written a number of children's fiction books.

#14031

Keith Urban

#14042

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Keith Lionel Urban is an Australian and American singer, guitarist, and songwriter known for his work in country music. Recognized with four Grammy Awards, Urban also received fifteen Academy of Country Music Awards, including the Jim Reeves International Award, thirteen CMA Awards, and six ARIA Music Awards. Urban wrote and performed the song "For You" from the film Act of Valor, which earned him nominations at both the 70th Golden Globe Awards and at the 18th Critics' Choice Awards in the respective Best Original Song categories.

#14032

David Grene

#14043

Overall Influence

1913 - 2002 (89 years)

David Grene was an Irish American professor of classics at the University of Chicago from 1937 until his death. He was a co-founder of the Committee on Social Thought and is best known for his translations of ancient Greek literature.

#14033

Lawrence A. Cunningham

#14044

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Lawrence A. Cunningham is a corporate director and advisor, author, professor and lawyer. He is the founder and managing partner of the Quality Shareholders Group and special counsel with Mayer Brown LLP, the international law firm. Cunningham is best known as an expert on corporate governance. He is also known for his knowledge of the history and corporate culture of Berkshire Hathaway and Warren Buffett. He has served on the board of directors of many companies, including Constellation Software, Kelly Group Partners, and Markel Group.

#14034

Robert Whitaker

Robert Whitaker

#14045

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Robert Whitaker is an American journalist and author, writing primarily about medicine, science, and history. He is the author of five books, three of which cover the history or practice of modern psychiatry. He has won numerous awards for science writing, and in 1998 he was part of a team writing for the Boston Globe that was shortlisted for the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for a series of articles questioning the ethics of psychiatric research in which unsuspecting patients were given drugs expected to heighten their psychosis. He is the founder and publisher of Mad in America, a w...

#14035

Daniel A. Farber

Daniel A. Farber

#14046

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Daniel A. Farber is an American lawyer, law professor, author, and historian. He is the Sho Sato Professor of Law at the UC Berkeley School of Law. Life and work Born in Chicago, Illinois, Farber graduated from the University of Illinois, earning his B.A. , M.A. , and J.D. degrees. He graduated summa cum laude from the College of Law, where he was class valedictorian. After graduating from law school, Farber clerked for Judge Philip Willis Tone on the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and Justice John Paul Stevens on the United States Supreme Court.

#14036

Stephen J. Hunt

#14047

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Stephen John Hunt is a British professor of sociology at the University of the West of England. Prior to his appointment at the University of West England in 2001, Hunt had taught at the Sociology Department at the University of Reading for thirteen years, as well as in the Religious Studies Department at the University of Surrey, Roehampton.

#14037

William Tietz

#14048

Overall Influence

1927 - 2020 (93 years)

William John Tietz Jr. was an American veterinarian who was Dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at Colorado State University from 1971 to 1977 and president of Montana State University from 1977 to 1990. A group of historians named Tietz one of Montana State's four most important presidents in 2011.

#14038

Harry Kane

#14049

Overall Influence

1993 - Present (33 years)

Harry Edward Kane is an English professional footballer who plays as a striker for Bundesliga club Bayern Munich and captains the England national team. A prolific goalscorer with strong link play, Kane is regarded as one of the best players in the world and one of the best strikers of his generation. He is both Tottenham Hotspur's and England's all-time highest goalscorer, as well as being the second-highest all-time goalscorer in the Premier League. Kane has scored over 350 goals for club and country.

#14039

Yair Tauman

#14050

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Yair Tauman is a Professor of Economics at State University of New York, Stony Brook and the Director of the Stony Brook Center for Game Theory. He studied at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem where he obtained his B.Sc. in Mathematics and Statistics and M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Mathematics, the latter two under the supervision of Robert Aumann. His areas of research interests are game theory and industrial organization. He has published, among others, in Econometrica, Games and Economic Behavior, Journal of Economic Theory, Quarterly Journal of Economics and RAND Journal of Economics.

#14040

Sergio Ramos

#14051

Overall Influence

1986 - Present (40 years)

Sergio Ramos García is a Spanish professional footballer who plays as a defender for La Liga club Sevilla. Widely regarded as one of the greatest defenders of all time, he is known for his exceptional tackling skills, aerial abilities and strong leadership. He is best known for his sixteen seasons spent playing for Real Madrid, winning four UEFA Champions League titles whilst at the club, along with two UEFA European Championships and the 2010 FIFA World Cup with the Spain national team.

#14041

Robert Reed, Baron Reed of Allermuir

#14052

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Robert John Reed, Baron Reed of Allermuir, is a British judge who has been President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom since January 2020. He was the principal judge in the Commercial Court in Scotland before being promoted to the Inner House of the Court of Session in 2008. He is an authority on human rights law in Scotland and elsewhere; he served as one of the UK's ad hoc judges at the European Court of Human Rights. He was also a Non-Permanent Judge of the Court of Final Appeal of Hong Kong.

#14042

William F. Schulz

#14053

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

William F. Schulz is a Unitarian Universalist minister who is most known for his role as the executive director of Amnesty International USA, the U.S. division of Amnesty International, from March 1994 to 2006. He is a prominent spokesperson, activist, and author focusing primarily on the issue of Human Rights and United States' Government role in promoting or disregarding them. In addition to his many public appearances, he has been affiliated with numerous non-profit organizations and universities.

#14043

Gideon Rosen

#14054

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Gideon Rosen is an American philosopher. He is a Stuart Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University, where he specializes in metaphysics, philosophy of mathematics, and ethics. Education and career Rosen graduated from Columbia University in 1984 and obtained his Ph.D. at Princeton in 1992, under the supervision of Paul Benacerraf. He taught at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor for several years before joining the Princeton faculty in 1993. He has served as chair of Princeton's Council of the Humanities and director of the Behrman Undergraduate Society of Fellows.

#14044

Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay

#14055

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Sanghamitra Bandyopadhyay is an Indian computer scientist specializing in computational biology. A professor at the Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, she is a Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize winner in Engineering Science for 2010, IInfosys Prize 2017 laureate in the Engineering and Computer Science category and TWAS Prize winner for Engineering Sciences in 2018. Her research is mainly in the areas of evolutionary computation, pattern recognition, machine learning and bioinformatics. Since 1 August 2015, she has been the Director of the Indian Statistical Institute, and she would oversee t...

#14045

Menahem Yaari

#14056

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (91 years)

Menahem E. Yaari is an Israeli economist who has been the S.A. Schonbrunn Professor of Mathematical Economics at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and was the President of the Open University of Israel from 1992 to 1997. He was awarded the Israel Prize in 1987, the Rothschild Prize in the Social Sciences in 1994, and the EMET Prize in the Social Sciences in 2012.

#14046

Colette Rolland

#14057

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Colette Rolland is a French computer scientist and Professor of Computer Science in the department of Mathematics and Informatics at the University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne, and a leading researcher in the area of information and knowledge systems, known for her work on meta-modeling, particularly goal modelling and situational method engineering.

#14047

Yasumasa Kanada

#14058

Overall Influence

1949 - 2020 (71 years)

Yasumasa Kanada was a Japanese computer scientist most known for his numerous world records over the past three decades for calculating digits of . He set the record 11 of the past 21 times. Kanada was a professor in the Department of Information Science at the University of Tokyo in Tokyo, Japan until 2015.

#14048

Betye Saar

#14059

Overall Influence

1926 - Present (100 years)

Betye Irene Saar is an African American artist known for her work in the medium of assemblage. Saar is a visual storyteller and an accomplished printmaker. Saar was a part of the Black Arts Movement in the 1970s, which engaged myths and stereotypes about race and femininity. Her work is considered highly political, as she challenged negative ideas about African Americans throughout her career; Saar is best known for her art work that critiques American racism toward Blacks.

#14049

Ryan Tubridy

#14060

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Ryan Tubridy is an Irish broadcaster. His broadcasting career with RTÉ spanned over two decades, where he presented many shows on radio and television, most notably The Late Late Show on RTÉ One from 2009 to 2023. Other shows he presented include RTÉ 2fm's The Full Irish and Tubridy , RTÉ One's Tubridy Tonight , RTÉ Radio One's The Tubridy Show and The Ryan Tubridy Show . He also hosted the Rose of Tralee contest on two occasions and worked for BBC Radio. In January 2024 he is scheduled to join Virgin Radio UK in London to present its mid-morning programme.

#14050

Henry O. Pollak

#14061

Overall Influence

1927 - Present (99 years)

Henry Otto Pollak is an Austrian-American mathematician. He is known for his contributions to information theory, and with Ronald Graham is the namesake of the Graham–Pollak theorem in graph theory.

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