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

#15451

Nigel Healey

#15462

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Nigel Healey is a British-New Zealand academic in management and higher education, who is Professor of International Higher Education and currently Vice-President of Global and Community Engagement at the University of Limerick. He served as Interim Provost and Deputy President during the Covid-19 pandemic from September 2020 to June 2022, returning to his substantive position in July 2022. His current research interests are in the internationalization of higher education, transnational education and higher education policy and management.

#15452

Jacques Fontanille

#15463

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Jacques Fontanille is a French semiotician who is one of the main exponents of the Paris School of Semiotics. He has authored or co-authored ten books and a number of articles or book chapters whose topics span theoretical semiotics, literary semiotics, and semiotics of the visual. A former student and collaborator of the founder of the Paris School of Semiotics, Algirdas Julien Greimas, Fontanille is one of the main continuators of Greimas' research program as he collaborated with him in his last published works, and assisted him in the administering and organizing of the Inter-Semiotic seminar at the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris.

#15453

Roz Chast

#15464

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Roz Chast is an American cartoonist and a staff cartoonist for The New Yorker. Since 1978, she has published more than 800 cartoons in The New Yorker. She also publishes cartoons in Scientific American and the Harvard Business Review.

#15454

Rachel Corrie

#15465

Overall Influence

1979 - 2003 (24 years)

Rachel Aliene Corrie was an American activist and diarist. She was a member of the pro-Palestinian International Solidarity Movement and was active throughout the Palestinian territories. In 2003, Corrie was in Rafah, a city in the Gaza Strip, where the Israeli military was demolishing Palestinian houses at the height of the Second Intifada. In an attempt to stop the demolitions as they were being carried out, she stood in front of an armored bulldozer and was subsequently crushed to death by it under contested circumstances.

#15455

Tom Axworthy

#15466

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Thomas Sidney Axworthy, is a Canadian civil servant, political strategist, writer and professor. He is best known for having served as Principal Secretary and Chief Speechwriter to Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. Axworthy is currently the Secretary General of the InterAction Council. Previously, he was president and CEO of the Walter and Duncan Gordan Foundation. He is a senior fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs, Massey College, and the Bill Graham Centre of Contemporary International History, Trinity College, at the University of Toronto.

#15456

Richard Dreyfuss

Richard Dreyfuss

#15467

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Richard Stephen Dreyfuss is an American actor. He is known for starring in popular films during the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, including American Graffiti , Jaws , Close Encounters of the Third Kind , The Goodbye Girl , The Competition , Stand by Me , Down and Out in Beverly Hills , Stakeout , Nuts , Always , What About Bob? , and Mr. Holland's Opus .

#15457

Serajul Islam Choudhury

Serajul Islam Choudhury

#15468

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (90 years)

Serajul Islam Choudhury is a Bangladeshi literary critic, public intellectual, social and political analyst, activist, historian, educationist, editor, translator, columnist, and professor emeritus at the University of Dhaka. He is the editor of Natun Diganta. Considered one of the foremost oppositional intellectuals of Bangladesh, he authored nearly a hundred books and countless essays in Bangla and English.

#15458

Peter Achinstein

#15469

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (91 years)

Peter Achinstein is an American philosopher of science at Johns Hopkins University. Biography Achinstein is the son of Betty and economist Asher Achinstein. He received his B.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard with a dissertation on Carnap's theory of probability. It was the German philosopher Carl G. Hempel, in a visit to Harvard in 1953–4 , who motivated him to pursue philosophy of science. Upon getting a Harvard Traveling Fellowship, Achinstein spent a year in Oxford in 1959 working under the guidance of P. F. Strawson. In Oxford he attended seminars and lectures delivered by Gilbert Ryle, A.J. Ayer, and J.L.

#15459

Ajit Iqbal Singh

#15470

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Ajit Iqbal Singh is an Indian mathematician, specialising in functional analysis and harmonic analysis. Singh is a Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy , India's apex body of scientists and technologists. She is also a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences , based in Allahabad.

#15460

Sharon Stone

#15471

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Sharon Vonne Stone is an American actress and painter. Known for primarily playing femme fatales and women of mystery on film and television, she became one of the most popular sex symbols of the 1990s. She is the recipient of various accolades, including a Primetime Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a nomination for an Academy Award. She received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1995 and was named Officer of the Order of Arts and Letters in France in 2005 .

#15461

Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel

#15472

Overall Influence

1928 - 2006 (78 years)

Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel was a leading French psychoanalyst, a training analyst, and past President of the Société psychanalytique de Paris in France. From 1983 to 1989, she was Vice President of the International Psychoanalytical Association. Chasseguet-Smirgel was Freud Professor at the University College, London, and Professor of Psychopathology at the Université Lille Nord de France. She is best known for her reworking of the Freudian theory of the ego ideal and its connection to primary narcissism, as well as for her extension of this theory to a critique of utopian ideology.

#15462

Nathan Zach

#15473

Overall Influence

1930 - 2020 (90 years)

Nathan Zach was an Israeli poet. Widely regarded as one of the preeminent poets in the country's history, he was awarded the Israel Prize in 1995 for poetry. He was also the recipient of other national and international awards. Zach was a professor of Hebrew and comparative literature at the University of Haifa.

#15463

Barbara Boxer

#15474

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Barbara Sue Boxer is an American politician and lobbyist who served in the United States Senate, representing California from 1993 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, she previously served as the U.S. representative for California's 6th congressional district from 1983 until 1993.

#15464

Valerie Steele

#15475

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Valerie Fahnestock Steele is an American fashion historian, curator, and director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Steele has written more than eight books on the history of fashion, and can be regarded as one of the pioneers in the study of fashion. She was appointed director of the museum in 2003.

#15465

Thomas Metzinger

Thomas Metzinger

#15476

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Thomas Metzinger is a German philosopher and professor of theoretical philosophy at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz. , he is an Adjunct Fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, a co-founder of the German Effective Altruism Foundation, president of the Barbara Wengeler Foundation, and on the advisory board of the Giordano Bruno Foundation. From 2008 to 2009, he served as a Fellow at the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study; from 2014 to 2019, he was a Fellow at the Gutenberg Research College; from 2019 to 2022, he was awarded a Senior-Forschungsprofessur by the Ministry of Science, Education and Culture.

#15466

Robert V. Remini

Robert V. Remini

#15477

Overall Influence

1921 - 2013 (92 years)

Robert Vincent Remini was an American historian and a professor emeritus at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He wrote numerous books about President Andrew Jackson and the Jacksonian era, most notably a three-volume biography of Jackson. For the third volume of Andrew Jackson, subtitled The Course of American Democracy, 1833-1845, he won the 1984 U.S. National Book Award for Nonfiction. Remini was widely praised for his meticulous research on Jackson and thorough knowledge of him. His books portrayed Jackson in a mostly favorable light and he was sometimes criticized for being too parti...

#15467

Steve McManaman

Steve McManaman

#15478

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Steven McManaman is an English former professional footballer who played as a winger. Nicknamed “Macca”, he is one of the most decorated English footballers to have played for a club abroad and is regarded as one of the best players of his generation, with the UEFA website stating in 2012 that "of all England's footballing exports in the modern era, none was as successful as McManaman".

#15468

Salil Vadhan

#15479

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Salil Vadhan is an American computer scientist. He is Vicky Joseph Professor of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics at Harvard University. After completing his undergraduate degree in Mathematics and Computer Science at Harvard in 1995, he obtained his PhD in Applied Mathematics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1999, where his advisor was Shafi Goldwasser. His research centers around the interface between computational complexity theory and cryptography. He focuses on the topics of pseudorandomness and zero-knowledge proofs. His work on the zig-zag product, with Omer Reingol...

#15469

David T. Ellwood

#15480

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

David T. Ellwood is an American economist and university administrator. He served as the dean of Harvard Kennedy School and as the Scott M. Black Professor of Political Economy at Harvard University.

#15470

Webb Miller

#15481

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Webb Colby Miller is an American bioinformatician who is professor in the Department of Biology and the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at The Pennsylvania State University. Education Miller attended Whitman College, and received his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Washington in 1969.

#15471

Hanna Fenichel Pitkin

#15482

Overall Influence

1931 - 2023 (92 years)

Hanna Fenichel Pitkin was an American political theorist. She was best known for her seminal study The Concept of Representation, published in 1967. Pitkin's diverse interests ranged from the history of European political thought from ancient to modern times, through ordinary language philosophy and textual analysis, to issues of psychoanalysis and gender in political and social theory.

#15472

Ben Witherington III

#15483

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Ben Witherington III is an American Wesleyan-Arminian New Testament scholar. Witherington is Professor of New Testament Interpretation at Asbury Theological Seminary, a Wesleyan-Holiness seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky, and an ordained pastor in the United Methodist Church.

#15473

Kyle Smith

#15484

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Kyle Smith is an American critic, columnist and novelist. He is currently the film critic for The Wall Street Journal and the theater critic for The New Criterion. Earlier, he was critic-at large for National Review, a film critic and columnist for the New York Post, and a contributor to The Wall Street Journal, People, New York, Forbes, The New York Times, and Commentary.

#15474

Sam Nunn

#15485

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Samuel Augustus Nunn Jr. is an American politician who served as a United States Senator from Georgia as a member of the Democratic Party. After leaving Congress, Nunn co-founded the Nuclear Threat Initiative , a charitable organization working to prevent catastrophic attacks with nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, for which he is a co-chair. His political experience and credentials on national defense reportedly earned him consideration as a potential running mate for presidential candidates John Kerry and Barack Obama after they became their party's nominees.

#15475

Sam Raimi

#15486

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Samuel M. Raimi is an American filmmaker. He is best known for directing the first three films in the Evil Dead franchise and the Spider-Man trilogy . He also directed the 1990 superhero film Darkman, the 1995 revisionist western The Quick and the Dead, the 1998 neo-noir crime-thriller A Simple Plan, the 2000 supernatural thriller film The Gift, the 2009 supernatural horror film Drag Me to Hell, the 2013 Disney fantasy film Oz the Great and Powerful, and the 2022 Marvel Cinematic Universe film Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

#15476

Michael Mitzenmacher

#15487

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Michael David Mitzenmacher is an American computer scientist working in algorithms. He is Professor of Computer Science at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and was area dean of computer science July 2010 to June 2013. He also runs My Biased Coin, a blog about theoretical computer science.

#15477

Ilkka Hanski

#15488

Overall Influence

1953 - 2016 (63 years)

Ilkka Aulis Hanski was a Finnish ecologist at the University of Helsinki, Finland. The Metapopulation Research Center led by Hanski, until his death, has been nominated as a Center of Excellence by the Academy of Finland. The group studies species living in fragmented landscapes and attempts to advance metapopulation ecology research. Metapopulation ecology itself studies populations of plants and animals which are separated in space by occupying patches.

#15478

Peter Ward

#15489

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Peter Douglas Ward is an American paleontologist and professor at the University of Washington, Seattle, and Sprigg Institute of Geobiology at the University of Adelaide. He has written numerous popular science works for a general audience and is also an adviser to the Microbes Mind Forum. In 2000, along with his co-author Donald E. Brownlee, he co-originated the term Rare Earth and developed the Medea hypothesis alleging that multicellular life is ultimately self-destructive.

#15479

Wolfgang Mommsen

#15490

Overall Influence

1930 - 2004 (74 years)

Wolfgang Justin Mommsen was a German historian. He was the twin brother of historian Hans Mommsen and the great-grandson of Theodor Mommsen. Biography Wolfgang Mommsen was born in Marburg, the son of the historian Wilhelm Mommsen and great-grandson of the Roman historian Theodor Mommsen. He was educated at the University of Marburg, the University of Cologne, and the University of Leeds between 1951 and 1959. He was assistant professor at the University of Cologne and full professor University of Düsseldorf ; he directed the German Historical Institute in London between 1978 and 1985. In 196...

#15480

David Bruck

#15491

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

David Isaac Bruck is a Canadian-American criminal defense attorney, clinical professor of law at Washington and Lee University School of Law, and director of the Virginia Capital Case Clearinghouse. Bruck was raised in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. He attended Harvard College and University of South Carolina School of Law. He has co-represented high profile defendants, including Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Dylann Roof, and Susan Smith.

#15481

Stephen C. Smith

#15492

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Stephen Charles Smith is an economist, author, and educator. He is Chair of the Department of Economics, and Professor of Economics and International Affairs at George Washington University. He is also a Research Fellow of the Institute for the Study of Labor .

#15482

Irwin I. Shapiro

#15493

Overall Influence

1929 - Present (97 years)

Irwin Ira Shapiro is an American astrophysicist and Timken University Professor at Harvard University. He has been a professor at Harvard since 1982. He was the director of the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian from 1982 to 2004.

#15483

Sean Lock

#15494

Overall Influence

1963 - 2021 (58 years)

Sean Lock was an English comedian and actor. He began his comedy career as a stand-up comedian and in 2000 he won the British Comedy Award, in the category of Best Live Comic, and was nominated for the Perrier Comedy Award. He was a team captain on the Channel 4 comedy panel show 8 Out of 10 Cats from 2005 to 2015, and on 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown from 2012 until his death in 2021.

#15484

Purushottama Lal

Purushottama Lal

#15495

Overall Influence

1929 - 2010 (81 years)

Purushottama Lal , commonly known as P. Lal, was an Indian poet, essayist, translator, professor and publisher. He was the founder of publishing firm Writers Workshop in Calcutta, established in 1958.

#15485

Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic

#15496

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic FRSC is a Serbian American biomedical engineer and university professor. She is a University Professor at Columbia University, as well as the Mikati Foundation Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Medical Sciences. She also heads the laboratory for Stem Cells and Tissue Engineering at Columbia University. She is part of the faculty at the Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Center for Human Development, both found at Columbia University. She is also an honorary professor at the Faculty of Technology and Metallurgy at the University of Belgrade, an honorary p...

#15486

Lalith Gamage

#15497

Overall Influence

Professor Lalith Gamage , MBCS, MIEE is a Sri Lankan academic. He is a professor, currently serving as the president and Chief Executive Officer of Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology, a position he has held since the beginning of the institute in 1999. He has also served as the Chairman of the Arthur C. Clarke Institute for Modern Technologies. As a leading Sri Lankan academic in the field of Computer Science, Prof Gamage has played an important role in the development of IT education, research and industry in Sri Lanka.

#15487

David Christian

David Christian

#15498

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

#15488

Joe Gibbs

#15499

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Joe Jackson Gibbs is an American auto racing team owner and former football coach. He served two stints as the head coach of the Washington Redskins of the National Football League , from 1981 to 1992 and then 2004 to 2007. Gibbs led them to nine playoff appearances, four NFC Championship titles, and three Super Bowl wins over 16 total seasons.

#15489

Sally Jackson

#15500

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Sally Ann Jackson is an American scholar of argumentation, communication, and rhetoric. She is a professor of communication at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Biography Jackson earned all three of her degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and has held faculty positions at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln , Michigan State University , University of Oklahoma , and the University of Arizona . At Arizona she also served in a series of administrative positions, including Vice Provost/Vice President for Learning and Information Technologies and Chief Information Officer.

#15490

Katherine Heigl

Katherine Heigl

#15501

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (48 years)

Katherine Marie Heigl is an American actress. She played Izzie Stevens on the ABC television medical drama Grey's Anatomy from 2005 to 2010, a role that brought her recognition and accolades, including the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series in 2007.

#15491

Joseph Finder

#15502

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Joseph Finder is an American thriller writer. His books include Paranoia, Company Man, The Fixer, Killer Instinct, Power Play, and the Nick Heller series of thrillers. His novel High Crimes was made into the film of the same name starring Ashley Judd and Morgan Freeman. His novel Paranoia was adapted into a 2013 film starring Liam Hemsworth, Gary Oldman, and Harrison Ford.

#15492

Alan Cairns

#15503

Overall Influence

1930 - 2018 (88 years)

Hugh Alan Craig Cairns, was a Canadian political scientist and professor. His scholarship focused on diverse topics within Canadian politics, including federalism, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, electoral politics, the role of the courts, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, and Indigenous issues. Cairns was a leading expert of federalism and governance, and his scholarship remains foundational in Canadian political science.

#15493

James C. Fletcher

James C. Fletcher

#15504

Overall Influence

1919 - 1991 (72 years)

James Chipman Fletcher served as the 4th and 7th Administrator of NASA, first from April 27, 1971 to May 1, 1977, under President Richard M. Nixon, and again from May 12, 1986 to April 8, 1989, under President Ronald Reagan. As such, he was responsible for Apollo Moon missions 15, 16, and 17, the early planning of the Space Shuttle program, and later for the shuttle program's recovery and return to flight after the Space Shuttle Challenger accident. Prior to this, he was president of the University of Utah from 1964 to 1971.

#15494

Saleemul Huq

#15505

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Saleemul Huq was a Bangladeshi-British scientist and had been the Director of the International Centre for Climate Change & Development based in Bangladesh, also Professor at Independent University, Bangladesh . He was elected one of Nature's 10 top scientists in 2022.

#15495

Gordon Parker

#15506

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Gordon Barraclough Parker AO is an Australian psychiatrist who is scientia professor of psychiatry at the University of New South Wales . Parker’s particular focus is on the phenomenology and epidemiology of mood disorders, social psychiatry, and the treatment and management of mood disorders. His research has assisted in modelling psychiatric conditions – depression, bipolar and personality disorders – and examining causes, mechanisms and treatments for mood disorders, together with innovative clinical work. Parker is a critic of the current unitary classification of major depressive disorder , and has proposed the revival of the diagnosis of melancholia.

#15496

Juan Ignacio Cirac Sasturain

Juan Ignacio Cirac Sasturain

#15507

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Juan Ignacio Cirac Sasturain , known professionally as Ignacio Cirac, is a Spanish physicist. He is one of the pioneers of the field of quantum computing and quantum information theory. He is the recipient of the 2006 Prince of Asturias Award in technical and scientific research.

#15497

Frederick Hitz

#15508

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Frederick Porter Hitz is an author and former Inspector General of the Central Intelligence Agency . Hitz graduated from Princeton University and the Harvard School of Law. Hitz entered the CIA in 1967 as an operations officer. In 1973 Hitz was moved to the State Department, the Department of Defense, and Department of Energy, and then returned to the CIA in 1978. President George H. W. Bush appointed Hitz the first statutory Inspector General of the CIA in 1990.

#15498

Mike Shinoda

#15509

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (49 years)

Michael Kenji Shinoda is an American musician, singer, rapper, songwriter, and record producer. He co-founded the rock band Linkin Park in 1996 and is the band's co-lead vocalist, as well as rhythm guitarist, keyboardist, primary songwriter and producer. Shinoda later created a hip-hop-driven side project, Fort Minor, in 2004. He has also served as a producer for tracks and albums by artists such as Lupe Fiasco, Styles of Beyond, and the X-Ecutioners.

#15499

Alexander Calandra

#15510

Overall Influence

1911 - 2006 (95 years)

Alexander Calandra was a scientist, educator, and author, perhaps best remembered for his short story, "Angels on a Pin ." Early life and education Calandra was born in Brooklyn, New York to Rosina Calandra and Lucio Calandra, immigrants from Sicily. Calandra received his bachelor's degree in chemistry from Brooklyn College in 1935. He taught there while pursuing his PhD at NYU, where he received an MA in 1938. and a PhD in chemistry in 1940.

#15500

Gary Schmitt

#15511

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Gary James Schmitt is an American political scientist who is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Early life and education Schmitt graduated from the University of Dallas in 1974 with a B.A. in Politics and the University of Chicago in 1980 with a Ph.D. in Political Science.

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