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

#16101

Martin Short

#16112

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Martin Hayter Short is a Canadian-American actor, comedian, singer, and writer. Short is known as an energetic comedian who gained prominence for his roles in sketch comedy. He has also acted in numerous films and television shows. He has received various awards including two Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Tony Award. Short was awarded as an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2019.

#16102

William C. Roberts

William C. Roberts

#16113

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (94 years)

William Clifford Roberts was an American physician specializing in cardiac pathology. He was a Master of the American College of Cardiology, a leading cardiovascular pathologist, and the former editor of both the American Journal of Cardiology and the Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings.

#16103

Jonathan E. Ingersoll

#16114

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Jonathan Edwards "Jon" Ingersoll, Jr. is an American economist. He is the Adrian C. Israel Professor of International Trade and Finance at Yale School of Management. Prior to coming to Yale he was on the faculty at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago.

#16104

Barbara Aland

#16115

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Barbara Aland, née Ehlers is a German theologian and was a professor of New Testament Research and Church History at Westphalian Wilhelms-University of Münster until 2002. Biography After having completed her degree of Theology and Classical Philology in Frankfurt, Marburg and Kiel she received the PhD in 1964 in Frankfurt/Germany. In 1969 she gained her licentiate at the "Oriental Faculty" of Pontificio Istituto Biblico in Rome, Italy. In 1972 she could habilitate in Göttingen about the Syrian gnostic Bardesanes of Edessa. Since 1972 she acted as private lecturer, later on she became profe...

#16105

J. Steven Wilkins

#16116

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

J. Steven Wilkins is a conservative American Calvinist and evangelical pastor and author known for views on slavery in the United States. Biography Steve Wilkins holds degrees from the University of Alabama and the Reformed Theological Seminary of Jackson, Mississippi. He was ordained as a minister in the Presbyterian Church in America in 1976, and has served as the pastor of Church of the Redeemer in West Monroe, Louisiana since 1989.

#16106

Margret Rey

#16117

Overall Influence

1906 - 1996 (90 years)

Margret Elizabeth Rey was a German-born American writer and illustrator, known best for the Curious George series of children's picture books that she and her husband H. A. Rey created from 1939 to 1966.

#16107

Nitya Anand

#16118

Overall Influence

1925 - Present (101 years)

Nitya Anand is a medicinal chemist who was the director of Central Drug Research Institute in Lucknow from 1974 to 1984. In 2005, Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission appointed him chairman of its scientific committee. In 2012, he was awarded the Padma Shri by the Indian government.

#16108

Jonathan R. Macey

#16119

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Jonathan R. Macey is an American legal scholar who serves as the Sam Harris Professor of Corporate Law, Corporate Finance and Securities Law at Yale Law School. Macey is the 4th most cited legal scholar ever in the world in the field of corporate law.

#16109

Mary Poovey

#16120

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Mary Louise Poovey is an American cultural historian and literary critic whose work focuses on the Victorian Era. She is currently Samuel Rudin University Professor in the Humanities at New York University, and Director of the Institute for the History of the Production of Knowledge. Poovey has taught at Johns Hopkins University, Swarthmore College, and Yale University.

#16110

Peng Shuai

#16121

Overall Influence

1986 - Present (40 years)

Peng Shuai is a Chinese former professional tennis player. In February 2014, she was ranked as the world No. 1 doubles player by the Women's Tennis Association , becoming the first Chinese tennis player to achieve that ranking in any discipline. She peaked at world No. 14 of the singles rankings in August 2011, and won two singles and 23 doubles titles on the WTA Tour.

#16111

Elinor Ochs

#16122

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Elinor Ochs is an American linguistic anthropologist, and Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at University of California, Los Angeles. Ochs has conducted fieldwork in Madagascar, Italy, Samoa and the United States of America on communication and interaction. Together with Bambi Schieffelin, Professor Ochs developed language socialization, a field of inquiry which examines the ways in which individuals become competent members of communities of practice to and through the use of language. Professor Ochs is also known for her contributions to applied linguistics and the theorization of narr...

#16112

Paola Antonelli

Paola Antonelli

#16123

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Paola Antonelli is an Italian architect, curator, author, editor, and educator. Antonelli is the Senior Curator of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art , New York, where she also serves as the founding Director of Research and Development. She has been described as "one of the 25 most incisive design visionaries in the world" by TIME magazine.

#16113

Gavino Ledda

#16124

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Gavino Ledda is an author and a scholar of the Italian language and of Sardinian. He is best known for his autobiographical work Padre Padrone . Biography Early life Ledda was born in Siligo, in the Province of Sassari, Sardinia, into a poor family of shepherds. Gavino's father made him leave school at the age of six, when he was only in the first year of his primary school education. Bursting into the classroom in the middle of a lesson, Ledda's father justified his position by saying that he needed the boy's help for his agricultural work, as Gavino was his eldest son. In scenes that featu...

#16114

Fred Van Lente

#16125

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Fred Van Lente from Chagrin Falls, Ohio is an American writer, primarily of comic books and graphic novels. Career Van Lente is the co-founder, along with artist Ryan Dunlavey, of Evil Twin Comics, which produces his and Dunlavey’s non-fiction comic books, the first and most famous of which is Action Philosophers.

#16115

Mitch Pacwa

#16126

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Mitchell Pacwa is an American Jesuit priest. He is president and founder of Ignatius Productions and is now the senior fellow of the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology. Education Pacwa completed high school at Archbishop Quigley Preparatory Seminary in 1967 with the intention of becoming a priest for the Archdiocese of Chicago. He decided that he wanted to be a Jesuit in high school and was accepted after his freshman year at Loyola University Chicago. He earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy and theology from University of Detroit Mercy and was ordained a priest of the Society of Jesus in 1976.

#16116

Donald Justice

#16127

Overall Influence

1925 - 2004 (79 years)

Donald Rodney Justice was an American teacher of writing and poet who won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1980. In summing up Justice's career, David Orr wrote, "In most ways, Justice was no different from any number of solid, quiet older writers devoted to traditional short poems. But he was different in one important sense: sometimes his poems weren't just good; they were great. They were great in the way that Elizabeth Bishop's poems were great, or Thom Gunn's or Philip Larkin's. They were great in the way that tells us what poetry used to be, and is, and will be."

#16117

Ally McCoist

#16128

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Alistair Murdoch McCoist, is a Scottish former footballer who has since worked as a manager and TV pundit. McCoist began his playing career with Scottish club St Johnstone, before moving to English side Sunderland in 1981. He returned to his homeland two years later, signing with Rangers. McCoist had a highly successful career with Rangers, becoming the club's record goalscorer and winning nine-successive league championships between 1988–89 and 1996–97. He later played for Kilmarnock.

#16118

Jon Kaas

#16129

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Jon Kaas is a professor at Vanderbilt University and a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences. He has made discoveries about the organization of the mammalian brain, including the description of many areas of the cerebral cortex and their neuroplasticity.

#16119

George G. Hall

#16130

Overall Influence

1925 - 2018 (93 years)

George Garfield Hall was a Northern Irish applied mathematician known for original work and contributions to the field of quantum chemistry. Independently from Clemens C. J. Roothaan, Hall discovered the Roothaan-Hall equations.

#16120

Tommy John

#16131

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Thomas Edward John Jr. , nicknamed "the Bionic Man," is an American former professional baseball pitcher who played in Major League Baseball for 26 seasons between 1963 and 1989. He played for the Cleveland Indians, Chicago White Sox, Los Angeles Dodgers, New York Yankees, California Angels, and Oakland Athletics. He was a four-time MLB All-Star and has the second-most wins of any pitcher since 1900 not in the Hall of Fame. Known for his longevity, John was the Opening Day starter six times – three for the White Sox and three times for the Yankees .

#16121

Klaus Staeck

#16132

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Klaus Staeck is a German lawyer and publisher who is best known in Germany for his political graphic design work. From 2006 to 2015 he was president of the Akademie der Künste at Berlin. Early life and education Klaus Staeck grew up in the East German city of Bitterfeld. After passing the Abitur in 1956 he moved to the West German city of Heidelberg where he lives down to the present day.

#16122

Uma Thurman

#16133

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Uma Karuna Thurman is an American actress and former model. She has performed in a variety of films, from romantic comedies and dramas to science fiction and action films. Following her appearances on the December 1985 and May 1986 covers of British Vogue, Thurman starred in Dangerous Liaisons . She rose to international prominence with her performance as Mia Wallace in Quentin Tarantino's 1994 film Pulp Fiction, for which she was nominated for the Academy Award, the BAFTA Award, the Golden Globe Award, and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Supporting Actress. Often hailed as Tarantino's...

#16123

Madeleine Akrich

#16134

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Madeleine Akrich is a French sociologist of technology. She served as the director of the Center for the Sociology of Innovation at Mines ParisTech from 2003 to 2013. She is known for developing actor–network theory with Bruno Latour, Michel Callon, John Law and others.

#16124

F. King Alexander

F. King Alexander

#16135

Overall Influence

Fieldon King Alexander is an American former university administrator and professor of higher education policy and finance. He was the president of Oregon State University, Louisiana State University, California State University, Long Beach, and Murray State University. He resigned from his most recent position as President of Oregon State University in 2021 after a faculty vote of no-confidence.

#16125

Erich Bloch

#16136

Overall Influence

1925 - 2016 (91 years)

Erich Bloch was a German-born American electrical engineer and administrator. He was involved with developing IBM's first transistorized supercomputer, 7030 Stretch, and mainframe computer, System/360. He served as director of the National Science Foundation from 1984 to 1990.

#16126

Eberhardt Rechtin

Eberhardt Rechtin

#16137

Overall Influence

1926 - 2006 (80 years)

Eberhardt Rechtin was an American systems engineer and respected authority in aerospace systems and systems architecture. Biography Eberhardt Rechtin was born in East Orange, New Jersey on January 16, 1926. He served in the U.S. Navy on active duty from 1943 to 1946 and continued as a reserve officer until 1958. He completed his undergraduate work at the California Institute of Technology during his Navy service. He received his doctorate in electrical engineering, also from Caltech, in 1950. He was a founding father of systems architecture as a distinct discipline.

#16127

Ed Caraeff

#16138

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Ed Caraeff is an American photographer, illustrator and graphic designer, who has worked largely in the music industry. He has art directed, photographed and designed more than 400 record album covers from 1967 to 1981 for numerous artists, including Bee Gees, Elton John, Steely Dan, Carly Simon, Three Dog Night, Tom Waits and Dolly Parton. His photography has appeared on the cover of four issues of Rolling Stone Magazine and is included in the permanent collection of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

#16128

Torsten Persson

#16139

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Torsten Persson is a Swedish economist who is the Swedish Research Council Distinguished Professor at the Institute for International Economic Studies, Stockholm University and Centennial Professor of Economics at the London School of Economics, and has held visiting positions at leading universities as Harvard, Princeton and Berkeley.

#16129

Charli XCX

#16140

Overall Influence

1992 - Present (34 years)

Charlotte Emma Aitchison , known professionally as Charli XCX, is an English singer and songwriter. Born in Cambridge and raised in Start Hill, Essex, she began posting songs on Myspace in 2008, which led to her discovery by a promoter who invited her to perform at warehouse raves. In 2010, she signed a recording contract with Asylum Records, releasing a series of singles and mixtapes throughout 2011 and 2012.

#16130

Wolfgang Haack

#16141

Overall Influence

1902 - 1994 (92 years)

Wolfgang Siegfried Haack was a German mathematician and aerodynamicist. He in 1941 and William Sears in 1947 independently discovered the Sears–Haack body. Life Wolfgang Haack studied mechanical engineering at the Leibniz University Hannover and mathematics in Jena. He earned his doctorate in 1926 at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena. After a short study and research period in Hamburg and a job as an assistant at the Technical University of Stuttgart he habilitated in 1929 at the TH Danzig . In 1935 he moved to the TH Berlin and in 1937, he followed the call to the TH Karlsruhe. During the Second World War he worked on projectile design.

#16131

Derek Penslar

#16142

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Derek Jonathan Penslar, is an American-Canadian comparative historian with interests in the relationship between modern Israel and diaspora Jewish societies, global nationalist movements, European colonialism, and post-colonial states.

#16132

A. J. Foyt

#16143

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (91 years)

Anthony Joseph Foyt Jr. is an American former racing driver who competed in numerous disciplines of motorsport. He is best known for his open wheel racing career, and for becoming the first four-time winner of the Indianapolis 500. He holds the most American National Championship titles in history, winning seven.

#16133

Deane Montgomery

Deane Montgomery

#16144

Overall Influence

1909 - 1992 (83 years)

Deane Montgomery was an American mathematician specializing in topology who was one of the contributors to the final resolution of Hilbert's fifth problem in the 1950s. He served as president of the American Mathematical Society from 1961 to 1962.

#16134

Pedro Almodóvar

Pedro Almodóvar

#16145

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Pedro Almodóvar Caballero is a Spanish film director and screenwriter. His films are marked by melodrama, irreverent humour, bold colour, glossy décor, quotations from popular culture, and complex narratives. Desire, LGBT issues, passion, family, and identity are among Almodóvar's most prevalent subjects in his films. Acclaimed as one of the most internationally successful Spanish filmmakers, Almodóvar and his films have gained worldwide interest and developed a cult following.

#16135

Steve Berlin

#16146

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Steven M. Berlin is an American saxophonist, keyboardist and record producer, best known as a member of the rock group Los Lobos and, before that, Top Jimmy & the Rhythm Pigs, the Blasters, and the Flesh Eaters. Berlin is married and lives with his wife and children in Portland, Oregon. Berlin joined the band Tuatara as a side project in 1998 on their second album, Trading with the Enemy.

#16136

Aleksandr Kogan

#16147

Overall Influence

1985 - Present (41 years)

Aleksandr Kogan is a Moldovan-born American scientist, who is known for his research on the link between oxytocin and kindness, and for having developed the app that allowed Cambridge Analytica to collect personal details of 30 million Facebook users. He worked as a University Lecturer at the University of Cambridge from 2012-2018 and is currently a technology entrepreneur.

#16137

Andrea diSessa

#16148

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Andrea A. diSessa is an education researcher and author of the book Turtle Geometry about Logo. He has also written highly cited research papers on the epistemology of physics, educational experimentation, and constructivist analysis of knowledge. He also created, with Hal Abelson, the Boxer Programming Environment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

#16138

Kevin Fong

#16149

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Kevin Jeremy San Yoong Fong is a British doctor and broadcaster. He is a consultant anaesthetist and anaesthetic lead for Major Incident Planning at UCL Hospitals. He is a professor at University College London where he organises and runs an undergraduate course Extreme Environment Physiology. Fong also serves as a prehospital doctor with Air Ambulance Kent Surrey Sussex and specialises in space medicine in the UK and is the co-director of the Centre for Aviation Space and Extreme Environment Medicine , University College London.

#16139

George H. Kerr

#16150

Overall Influence

1911 - 1992 (81 years)

George H. Kerr , also known in Taiwan as 葛超智 , was a United States diplomat during World War II, and in later years he was an author and an academic. His published works and archived papers cover "economic and political affairs in Taiwan in the 1930s and 1940s, Taiwan's transition from Japanese rule before and during World War II to postwar Chinese rule, Taiwanese rebellion against Chinese rule in 1947, and U.S. foreign policy toward Taiwan." His works also include "information about economic and political conditions in Okinawa and the Ryukyu Islands after World War II."

#16140

David Berlo

#16151

Overall Influence

1929 - 1996 (67 years)

David Kenneth Berlo was an American communications theorist. He taught at Michigan State University and later served as president of Illinois State University. Early life and career He was raised in St. Louis, Missouri, and studied psychology at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. Berlo remained at UIUC to pursue his doctorate in communications under Wilbur Schramm. While at the University of Illinois, he wrote a communications textbook titled The Process of Communication, which is still used today. Berlo was founding chairman of the Faculty of Communication at Michigan State Univ...

#16141

Marsha Berger

#16152

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Marsha J. Berger is an American computer scientist. Her areas of research include numerical analysis, computational fluid dynamics, and high-performance parallel computing. She is a Silver Professor of Computer Science and Mathematics in the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University. She is Group Leader of Modeling and Simulation in the Center for Computational Mathematics at the Flatiron Institute.

#16142

Knut Borchardt

#16153

Overall Influence

1929 - 2023 (94 years)

Knut Borchardt was a German researcher, historian and former professor for history and economics at both the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and the University of Mannheim from 1962 to 1991. Moreover, he served as rector at the University of Mannheim between 1967 and 1969.

#16143

Jeremy J. Shapiro

Jeremy J. Shapiro

#16154

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Jeremy J. Shapiro , is an American academic, a professor emeritus at Fielding Graduate University who works in the area of critical social theory with emphasis on the social and cultural effects of information technology and systems, social change, and the aesthetics of music. His main intellectual products/innovations includethe concept of the universal semiotic of technological experience: a language of images, symbols, and technologies that integrates the conscious and unconscious, the public and the private, in advanced industrial civilization;zen socialism, an approach to socialism that f...

#16144

Martin Beneke

#16155

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Martin Beneke is a German physicist. Biography Beneke studied Physics, Mathematics and Philosophy at the University of Konstanz, University of Cambridge and University of Heidelberg. In 1993 he received his doctorate at the Technical University of Munich on the structure of perturbative series in higher order and habilitated in Heidelberg in 1998.

#16145

Werner Franke

#16156

Overall Influence

1940 - 2022 (82 years)

Werner Wilhelm Franke was a German biologist and a professor of cell and molecular biology at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg. He was an anti-doping pioneer in Germany. Life Franke was born in Paderborn on 31 January 1940. After completing high school , he studied chemistry, biology and physics at the University of Heidelberg. Following completion of his doctorate and habilitation he became a university professor in Heidelberg and, at the same time, became the head of a department at the German Cancer Research Center. In 1982, Franke became the president of the European Cell Biology Organization , a post he held until 1990.

#16146

Brian Cantor

#16157

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Brian Cantor CBE FREng has been a long-serving university leader, is a visiting professor in the Department of Materials at the University of Oxford, and a consultant at the Brunel Centre for Advanced Solidification Technology at Brunel University. He was the vice-chancellor of the University of Bradford from 2013 to 2019. Prior to this appointment he was the vice-chancellor at the University of York from 2002 to 2013, and previously he was the head of the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Division at the University of Oxford.

#16147

Jonah Berger

#16158

Overall Influence

Jonah Berger is a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, an internationally best-selling author, and an expert on change, word of mouth, viral marketing, social influence, and how products, ideas, and behavior catch on. He has published over 50 articles in academic journals, and has written for The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Harvard Business Review. More than a million copies of his books Contagious: Why Things Catch On, Invisible Influence: The Hidden Forces that Shape Behavior, and The Catalyst: How to Change Anyone's Mind are in print in over 35 cou...

#16148

Mikis Theodorakis

#16159

Overall Influence

1925 - 2021 (96 years)

Michail "Mikis" Theodorakis was a Greek composer and lyricist credited with over 1,000 works. He scored for the films Zorba the Greek , Z , and Serpico . He was a three-time BAFTA nominee, winning for Z. For the score in the movie Serpico , he earned Grammy nominations. Furthermore, for the unforgettable score to Zorba the Greek , with its 'Zorba's Dance', he was Golden Globe nominated.

#16149

Radhika Coomaraswamy

#16160

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Deshamanya Radhika Coomaraswamy is a Sri Lankan lawyer, diplomat and human rights advocate who served as the Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict until 13 July 2012. Secretary-General Kofi Annan appointed her to the position in April 2006. She was nominated to the Constitutional Council as a civil representative on 10 September 2015. In 2017, after atrocities against the Rohingya people, she was appointed a Member of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on Myanmar.

#16150

Wiel Arets

#16161

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Wiel Arets is a Dutch architect, architectural theorist, urbanist, industrial designer and the former dean of the college of architecture at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, in the United States of America. Arets was previously the 'Professor of Building Planning and Design' at the Berlin University of the Arts , Germany, and studied at the Technical University of Eindhoven, graduating in 1983. The same year later he founded Wiel Arets Architects, a multidisciplinary architecture and design studio, today with studios in Amsterdam, Maastricht, Munich, and Zürich. From 1995-2002...

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