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

#16901

Juan Bosch

#16912

Overall Influence

1909 - 2001 (92 years)

Juan Emilio Bosch y Gaviño was a Dominican politician, historian, writer, essayist, educator, and the first democratically elected president of the Dominican Republic for a brief time in 1963. Previously, he had been the leader of the Dominican opposition in exile to the dictatorial regime of Rafael Trujillo for over 25 years. To this day, he is remembered as an honest politician and regarded as one of the most prominent writers in Dominican literature. He founded both the Dominican Revolutionary Party in 1939 and the Dominican Liberation Party in 1973.

#16902

Richard Schacht

#16913

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Richard Schacht is an American philosopher and professor emeritus at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign now residing in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He is an expert on the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, was the editor of International Nietzsche Studies, and is former executive director of the North American Nietzsche Society. His philosophical interests include European philosophy after Kant, particularly Friedrich Nietzsche and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and concepts such as human nature, alienation, and value theory.

#16903

Walter F. Murphy

#16914

Overall Influence

1929 - 2010 (81 years)

Walter Francis Murphy, Jr. was an American political scientist and writer. Early life and education Born in Charleston, South Carolina, Murphy received a Distinguished Service Cross and was awarded a Purple Heart for his service in the United States Marine Corps during the Korean War, eventually retiring with the rank of colonel. He earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Notre Dame in 1950 and a PhD from the University of Chicago in 1957.

#16904

Howard Harry Rosenbrock

Howard Harry Rosenbrock

#16915

Overall Influence

1920 - 2010 (90 years)

Howard Harry Rosenbrock was a leading figure in control theory and control engineering. He was born in Ilford, England in 1920, graduated in 1941 from University College London with a 1st class honors degree in Electrical Engineering. He served in the Royal Air Force during World War II. He received the PhD from London University in 1955. After some time spent at Cambridge University and MIT, he was awarded a Chair at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, where he founded the Control Systems Centre. He died on 21 October 2010.

#16905

Manuel H. Johnson

Manuel H. Johnson

#16916

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Manuel Holman "Manley" Johnson Jr. is an American economist who served as the 13th vice chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1986 to 1990. After leaving the Fed, he has been co-chairman and senior partner at Johnson Smick International, Inc., an investments, economic and political consulting firm. He has also authored or co-authored six books.

#16906

John Vattanky

#16917

Overall Influence

1931 - 2021 (90 years)

Rev. John Vattanky SJ was a Jesuit priest, belonging to Kerala province, in India. An Indian philosopher, specializing in Gangesa's Navya-Nyāya, he resided at De Nobili College, Pune. Vattanky was a Professor Emeritus of Jnana-Deepa Vidyapeeth, Pune, India. He has contributed significantly to the growth of Indian philosophy and Indian Christian Theology.

#16907

Nicholas Tucker

#16918

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Nicholas Tucker is an English academic and writer who is an honorary Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies at the University of Sussex. He was educated at Burgess Hill School in Hampstead, London, where his English teacher was briefly Bernice Rubens. A former teacher and then an educational psychologist, he has had a long association with the Sussex University, having lectured in educational psychology and cultural studies and children's literature at the institution. He was a Senior Lecturer in several of these disciplines.

#16908

Jerry Bails

#16919

Overall Influence

1933 - 2006 (73 years)

Jerry Gwin Bails was an American popular culturist. Known as the "Father of Comic Book Fandom," he was one of the first to approach the comic book field as a subject worthy of academic study, and was a primary force in establishing 1960s comics fandom.

#16909

Lech Kaczyński

#16920

Overall Influence

1949 - 2010 (61 years)

Lech Aleksander Kaczyński was a Polish politician who served as the city mayor of Warsaw from 2002 until 2005, and as President of Poland from 2005 until his death in 2010. Before his tenure as president, he previously served as President of the Supreme Audit Office from 1992 to 1995 and later Minister of Justice and Public Prosecutor General in Jerzy Buzek's cabinet from 2000 until his dismissal in July 2001.

#16910

Severino Antinori

#16921

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Severino Antinori is an Italian gynecologist and embryologist. He has publicly taken controversial positions over in vitro fertilisation and human cloning. On 13 May 2016 Antinori was arrested and accused of kidnapping a woman, and stealing her ovules.

#16911

Stefan Grimme

#16922

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Stefan Grimme , is a German physical chemist; he completed a Ph.D. thesis on photochemistry at Technical University of Braunschweig in 1991; he is a professor at the Universität Bonn since 2011 who is active in the field of computational chemistry; he was elected a member of the Academy of Sciences Leopoldina in 2018.

#16912

Michele Dauber

#16923

Overall Influence

Michele Landis Dauber is the Frederick I. Richman Professor at the Stanford Law School, and a Professor of Sociology, by courtesy. Early life Dauber graduated from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 1993. She earned a JD from Northwestern University's Pritzker School of Law in 1998, and a PhD in Sociology from its Graduate School in 2003.

#16913

Margot Käßmann

#16924

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Margot Käßmann is a Lutheran theologian, who was Landesbischöfin of the Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Hanover in Germany. On 28 October 2009, she was also elected to lead the Protestant Church in Germany, a federation of Protestant church bodies in Germany. She stepped down from both offices on 24 February 2010 following a drink-driving incident. After serving as a "Reformation Ambassador" for the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, she retired in 2018.

#16914

Sedat Laçiner

#16925

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Sedat Laçiner is a Turkish academic specialist on the Middle East and International Relations, with particular reference to Turkish foreign policy and rector of Çanakkale Onsekiz Mart University .

#16915

Srđa Trifković

#16926

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Srđa Trifković is a Serbian-American publicist, politician and historian. He is currently a foreign affairs editor for the paleoconservative magazine Chronicles, and a politics professor at the University of Banja Luka in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

#16916

Ronald Loui

#16927

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Ronald Prescott Loui is an American computer scientist, currently working as a professor of computer science at Case Western Reserve University. He is known for having supplied first-hand biographical information on Barack Obama about his time in Hawaii. Previously, he has been a professor at Washington University in St. Louis and University of Illinois Springfield.

#16917

Imran Rahman

#16928

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Imran Rahman is an academician and the current vice-chancellor of the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh . He was a special adviser to ULAB's board of trustees. He began his career at the ULAB as the director of the School of Business in 2006 and later became the vice-chancellor during 2012–2016. He was the pro-vice-chancellor of the university during 2009–2012. He spent 28 years at Institute of Business Administration as a faculty member in the department of finance, chairman of the BBA Program, and Chairman of the IBA Computer Center before joining ULAB.

#16918

Matteo Salvini

#16929

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Matteo Salvini is an Italian politician who has served as Deputy Prime Minister of Italy and Minister of Infrastructure and Transport since 2022. He has been Federal Secretary of Italy's Lega Nord party since December 2013 and an Italian senator since March 2018. Salvini represented Northwestern Italy in the European Parliament from 2004 to 2018.

#16919

Bernard Bergonzi

#16930

Overall Influence

1929 - 2016 (87 years)

Bernard Bergonzi FRSL was a British literary scholar, critic, and poet. He was Emeritus Professor of English at the University of Warwick and an expert on T. S. Eliot. He was born in London and studied at Wadham College, Oxford. He had an academic position in Manchester before moving to Warwick, and held visiting professorships at American universities.

#16920

Edwin Feulner

#16931

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Edwin John Feulner Jr. is a former think tank executive who founded the conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation and served as its president from 1977 to 2013 and again from 2017 to 2018. Feulner's positions have included advisor and chairman of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, from which he received the Truman-Reagan Medal of Freedom in 2006.

#16921

M. David Rudd

#16932

Overall Influence

M. David Rudd is an American psychologist and academic administrator who has served as the president of the University of Memphis since 2014. Education Rudd earned a bachelor’s degree cum laude in psychology from Princeton University in 1983, where he also lettered in Varsity football. He returned to his home state of Texas to study at University of Texas at Austin, where he holds a master’s degree and Ph.D. in psychology. Rudd then began active duty service in the United States Military as a U.S. Army Captain originally stationed at Fort Ord, California and later at Fort Hood, Texas, transitioning from active duty service following the Gulf War.

#16922

Michael York

#16933

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Michael York is an American religious studies scholar, based in the United Kingdom, who specializes in the study of pre-Christian European religion and its relation to contemporary Paganism. In 2003, he published Pagan Theology, in which he put forward the idea that the ancient pre-Christian and pre-Islamic religions of Eurasia, indigenous religions from across the globe, and contemporary Pagan faiths could all be constituted as forms of paganism. Michael York participated in TEDxLambeth 2019 as a speaker.

#16923

Francis J. Beckwith

#16934

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Francis J. "Frank" Beckwith is an American philosopher, professor, scholar, speaker, writer, and lecturer. He is currently Professor of Philosophy & Church-State Studies, Affiliate Professor of Political Science and Associate Director of the Graduate Program in Philosophy, at Baylor University, where he first served as Associate Director of Baylor's J. M. Dawson Institute of Church-State Studies.

#16924

Rainer Waser

#16935

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Rainer Waser is a German professor of Electrical Engineering at RWTH Aachen University. He is also director of the section Electronic Materials at the Peter Grünberg Institute which is located on the campus of Jülich Research Center . His research and teaching is on solid-state chemistry and defect chemistry to electronic properties and modelling, the technology of new materials and the physical properties of construction components.

#16925

Thomas Meehan

#16936

Overall Influence

1929 - 2017 (88 years)

Thomas Edward Meehan was an American playwright. He wrote the books for the musicals Annie, The Producers, Hairspray, Young Frankenstein and Cry-Baby. He co-wrote the books for Elf: The Musical and Limelight: The Story of Charlie Chaplin.

#16926

George P. Fletcher

#16937

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

George P. Fletcher is the Cardozo Professor of Jurisprudence at Columbia University School of Law. Fletcher attended Cornell University from 1956 to 1959, studying mathematics and Russian. He received a B.A. in 1960 from University of California, Berkeley and his J.D. in 1964 from the University of Chicago. He studied at the University of Freiburg from 1964 to 1965 and received a Masters in Comparative Law in 1965 from the University of Chicago. He taught at the law schools of the University of Florida, University of Washington, and Boston College and then UCLA, from 1969 to 1983. Since then ...

#16927

Nicholas Katzenbach

#16938

Overall Influence

1922 - 2012 (90 years)

Nicholas deBelleville Katzenbach was an American lawyer who served as United States Attorney General during the Lyndon B. Johnson administration. He previously served as United States Deputy Attorney General under President John F. Kennedy.

#16928

Alim Louis Benabid

Alim Louis Benabid

#16939

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Alim Louis Benabid is a French-Algerian emeritus professor, neurosurgeon and member of the French Academy of Sciences, who has had a global impact in the development of deep brain stimulation for Parkinson's disease and other movement disorders. He became emeritus professor of biophysics at the Joseph Fourier University in Grenoble in September 2007, and chairman of the board of the Edmond J. Safra Biomedical Research Center in 2009 at Clinatec, a multidisciplinary institute he co-founded in Grenoble that applies nanotechnologies to neurosciences.

#16929

Jay David Bolter

#16940

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Jay David Bolter is the Wesley Chair of New Media and a professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His areas of study include the evolution of media, the use of technology in education, and the role of computers in the writing process. More recently, he has conducted research in the area of augmented reality and mixed media. Bolter collaborates with researchers in the Augmented Environments Lab, co-directed with Blair MacIntyre, to create apps for entertainment, cultural heritage and education for smart phones and tablets. This su...

#16930

Octave Levenspiel

#16941

Overall Influence

1926 - 2017 (91 years)

Octave Levenspiel was a professor of chemical engineering at Oregon State University . His principal interest was chemical reaction engineering, and he was the author of a major textbook Chemical Reaction Engineering as well as numerous research publications.

#16931

José Adem

#16942

Overall Influence

1921 - 1991 (70 years)

José Adem was a Mexican mathematician who worked in algebraic topology, and proved the Adem relations between Steenrod squares. Life and education Born José Adem Chahín in Tuxpan, Veracruz, , Adem showed an interest in mathematics from an early age, and moved to Mexico City in 1941 to pursue a degree in engineering and mathematics. He obtained his B.S. in mathematics from the National Autonomous University of Mexico in 1949. During this time met Solomon Lefschetz, a famous algebraic topologist who was spending prolonged periods of time in Mexico. Lefschetz recognized Adem's mathematical talent, and sent him as a doctoral student to Princeton University where he graduated in 1952.

#16932

Michael J. Alexander

#16943

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Michael Joseph Alexander was a British translator, poet, academic and broadcaster. He held the Berry Chair of English Literature at the University of St Andrews until his retirement in 2003. He is best known for his translations of Beowulf and other Anglo-Saxon poems into modern English verse.

#16933

Makoto Kumada

#16944

Overall Influence

1920 - 2007 (87 years)

Makoto Kumada was a Japanese chemist and was a Professor of Chemistry first at Osaka City University until his retirement in 1983 at Kyoto University in Japan. In 1972, Kumada's group reported nickel-catalyzed cross coupling reactions nearly concurrently with the Corriu group working in France. The Kumada coupling now bears his name.

#16934

Andrey Alexandrovich Verbitsky

Andrey Alexandrovich Verbitsky

#16945

Overall Influence

1941 - 2020 (79 years)

Andrey Alexandrovich Verbitsky , is a Russian educational psychologist. His areas of academic interest include the development of higher education in Russia, as well as developmental, educational, and social psychology. He has published more than 200 academic and instructional papers, including five monographs.

#16935

Chad Trujillo

#16946

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Chadwick A. Trujillo is an American astronomer, discoverer of minor planets and the co-discoverer of Eris, the most massive dwarf planet known in the Solar System. Trujillo works with computer software and has examined the orbits of the numerous trans-Neptunian objects , which is the outer area of the Solar System that he specialized in. In late August 2005, it was announced that Trujillo, along with Michael Brown and David Rabinowitz, had discovered Eris in 2003. As a result of the discovery of the satellite Dysnomia, Eris was the first TNO known to be more massive than Pluto.

#16936

Roger Fowler

#16947

Overall Influence

1939 - 1999 (60 years)

Roger Fowler was a world-renowned and long-serving British Linguist, and was professor of English and Linguistics at the University of East Anglia. He is well known for his works in stylistics. Together with Bob Hodge, Gunther Kress and Tony Trew, he authored the influential book Language and Control, which gave rise to the discipline of critical linguistics. He was educated at University College, London.

#16937

Simon Franklin

#16948

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Simon Franklin is Professor of Slavonic Studies at the University of Cambridge, UK. He is a Fellow of Clare College. In 2007 he was awarded the Lomonosov Gold Medal by the Russian Academy of Sciences for outstanding achievements in research in Russian history and culture.

#16938

Dale Earnhardt

#16949

Overall Influence

1951 - 2001 (50 years)

Ralph Dale Earnhardt was an American professional stock car driver and racing team owner, who raced from 1975 to 2001 in the former NASCAR Winston Cup Series , most notably driving the No.3 Chevrolet for Richard Childress Racing. His aggressive driving style earned him the nicknames "the Intimidator", "the Man in Black" and "Ironhead"; after his son Dale Earnhardt Jr. joined the Cup Series circuit in 1999, Earnhardt was generally known by the retronyms Dale Earnhardt Sr. and Dale Sr. He is regarded as one of the greatest drivers in NASCAR history and named as one of the NASCAR's 50 Greatest D...

#16939

Daniela Hantuchová

Daniela Hantuchová

#16950

Overall Influence

1983 - Present (43 years)

Daniela Hantuchová is a Slovak tennis commentator and retired player. She turned professional in 1999 and had her breakthrough year in 2002, when she won her first WTA Tour title at the Indian Wells Masters, defeating Martina Hingis in the final and becoming the lowest-ranked player to ever win the tournament. She also reached the quarterfinals of that year's Wimbledon Championships and US Open, ending the year in the top ten. She was part of the Slovak team that won the 2002 Fed Cup and the 2005 Hopman Cup.

#16940

Doina Cornea

#16951

Overall Influence

1929 - 2018 (89 years)

Doina Cornea was a Romanian human rights activist and French language professor. She was a dissident during the communist rule of Nicolae Ceaușescu. She was co-founder of the Democratic Anti-totalitarian Forum of Romania , as the first attempt to unify the democratic opposition to the post-communist government. This organization later transformed into the Romanian Democratic Convention , which brought Emil Constantinescu to power.

#16941

Fred Perry

#16952

Overall Influence

1909 - 1995 (86 years)

Frederick John Perry was a British tennis and table tennis player and former world No. 1 from England who won 10 Majors including eight Grand Slam tournaments and two Pro Slams single titles, as well as six Major doubles titles. Perry won three consecutive Wimbledon Championships from 1934 to 1936 and was World Amateur number one tennis player during those three years. Prior to Andy Murray in 2013, Perry was the last British player to win the men's Wimbledon championship, in 1936, and the last British player to win a men's singles Grand Slam title, until Andy Murray won the 2012 US Open.

#16942

Ronald Stuart Burt

#16953

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Ronald Stuart Burt is an American sociologist. He is the Charles M. Harper Leadership Professor of Sociology and Strategy at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a Distinguished Professor at Bocconi University. He is most notable for his research and writing on social networks and social capital, particularly the concept of structural holes in a social network.

#16943

Roberta Wohlstetter

#16954

Overall Influence

1912 - 2007 (95 years)

Roberta Morgan Wohlstetter was an American historian of U.S. military intelligence. In 1962 she authored Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision. The book was based on a several-year study of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and is still considered the foundational study of military surprises. Winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom awarded to her in 1985 by President Ronald Reagan.

#16944

Uzi Arad

#16955

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Uzi Arad is an Israeli strategist and a well-known figure in foreign policy, security and strategic circles in Israel and abroad. He is a fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. Between 2009 and 2011 Arad served as the National Security Advisor to the Prime Minister of Israel, and the head of the Israeli National Security Council.

#16945

Paul Hudak

#16956

Overall Influence

1952 - 2015 (63 years)

Paul Raymond Hudak was an American musician and professor of computer science at Yale University who was best known for his involvement in the design of the programming language Haskell, and for several textbooks on Haskell and computer music. He was a chair of the department, and was also master of Saybrook College. He died on April 29, 2015, of leukemia.

#16946

Douglas Ravenel

Douglas Ravenel

#16957

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Douglas Conner Ravenel is an American mathematician known for work in algebraic topology. Life Ravenel received his PhD from Brandeis University in 1972 under the direction of Edgar H. Brown, Jr. with a thesis on exotic characteristic classes of spherical fibrations. From 1971 to 1973 he was a C. L. E. Moore instructor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and in 1974/75 he visited the Institute for Advanced Study. He became an assistant professor at Columbia University in 1973 and at the University of Washington in Seattle in 1976, where he was promoted to associate professor in 1978 and professor in 1981.

#16947

Jozef Schell

#16958

Overall Influence

1935 - 2003 (68 years)

Jozef Stefaan "Jeff", Baron Schell was a Belgian molecular biologist. Schell studied zoology and microbiology at the University of Ghent, Belgium. From 1967 to 1995 he worked as a professor at the university. From 1978 to 2000 he was director and head of the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research at the Max-Planck-Gesellschaft in Cologne, Germany. He received many prizes, among which were the Francqui Prize in 1979, the Wolf Prize in Agriculture in 1990, and the Japan Prize in 1998, which he shared with Marc Van Montagu. He also was appointed Professeur Honoraire, Collège de France, Paris in 1998.

#16948

Jean-Loup Gervais

#16959

Overall Influence

1936 - 2020 (84 years)

Jean-Loup Gervais is a French theoretical physicist. Gervais studied physics and mathematics in Paris, where he graduated in 1961 and got his Ph.D. in 1965 as a student of Claude Bouchiat and Philippe Meyer in Orsay. From 1966 to 1968 he was a post-doctoral researcher at New York University. Already since 1960 he was employed at the CNRS, from 1970 on as Maître de conférences. During 1973–1985 he was Maître de conférences at École polytechnique.

#16949

Gordon Hanson

#16960

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Gordon Howard Hanson is the Peter Wertheim Professor in Urban Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. Education Hanson received his A.B. from Occidental College in 1986 and his Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1992, both in economics. His Ph.D. dissertation was entitled Industry agglomeration and trade in Mexico, and his doctoral advisor was Michael J. Piore and was co-advised by Paul Krugman.

#16950

Joseph J. Spengler

#16961

Overall Influence

1902 - 1991 (89 years)

Joseph John Spengler was an American economist, statistician, and historian of economic thought. A recipient of the 1951 John Frederick Lewis Award of the American Philosophical Society and the 1981 Distinguished Fellow Award from the History of Economics Society, he was Professor Emeritus of Economics at Duke University at the time of his death.

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions