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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Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people

#17401

Juan Carlos Tedesco

Juan Carlos Tedesco

#17412

Overall Influence

1944 - 2017 (73 years)

Juan Carlos Tedesco was an Argentine academic and policy maker who was the President's Education Minister, from December 2007 to July 2009. Life and career Tedesco was born in Buenos Aires in 1944. Enrolling at the University of Buenos Aires, he graduated with a degree in Philosophy and Letters in 1968. He taught as Professor of Educational History in the Universities of La Plata, El Comahue and La Pampa and authored his first book, Education and Society in Argentina, 1800-1945, in 1972.

#17402

Helen King

#17413

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Helen King is a British classical scholar and advocate for the medical humanities. She is Professor Emerita of Classical Studies at the Open University. She was previously Professor of the History of Classical Medicine and Head of the Department of Classics at the University of Reading.

#17403

Jonathan Michie

#17414

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Jonathan Michie is a British economist who is president of Kellogg College, Oxford, where he is professor of innovation and knowledge exchange. Early life Michie is the son of the biologist Dame Anne McLaren and computer scientist Donald Michie, and brother of the academic psychologist Susan Michie.

#17404

Marie Brenner

#17415

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Marie Harriet Brenner is an American author, investigative journalist and writer-at-large for Vanity Fair. She has also written for New York, The New Yorker and the Boston Herald and has taught at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. Her 1996 Vanity Fair article on tobacco insider Jeffrey Wigand, "The Man Who Knew Too Much", inspired the 1999 movie The Insider, starring Russell Crowe and Al Pacino. Her February 1997 Vanity Fair article "American Tragedy: The Ballad of Richard Jewell" partially inspired the 2019 film Richard Jewell directed by Clint Eastwood.

#17405

Chela Sandoval

#17416

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Chela Sandoval , associate professor of Chicana Studies at University of California, Santa Barbara, is a noted theorist of postcolonial feminism and third world feminism. Beginning with her 1991 pioneering essay 'U.S. Third World Feminism: The Theory and Method of Oppositional Consciousness in the Postmodern World', Sandoval emerged as a significant voice for women of color and decolonial feminism.

#17406

Jean-Benoît Bost

Jean-Benoît Bost

#17417

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Jean-Benoît Bost is a French mathematician. Early life and education In 1977, Bost graduated from the Lycée Louis-le-Grand and finished first in the Concours général, the national competition for the places at the elite schools. Bost studied from 1979 to 1983 at the École Normale Supérieure , where he was from 1984 to 1988 agrégé-préparateur and worked under the direction of Alain Connes.

#17407

Peter Gray

#17418

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Peter Otis Gray is an American psychology researcher and scholar. He is a research professor of psychology at Boston College, and the author of an introductory psychology textbook. He is known for his work on the interaction between education and play, and for his evolutionary perspective on psychology theory.

#17408

Dave Kopel

#17419

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

David B. Kopel is an American author, attorney, gun rights advocate, and contributing editor to several publications. As of August 2021, he is research director of the Independence Institute, associate policy analyst at the Cato Institute, adjunct professor of advanced constitutional law at Denver University, Sturm College of Law and contributes to the Volokh Conspiracy legal blog. Previously he was adjunct professor of law, New York University, and former assistant attorney general for Colorado.

#17409

Gökhan S. Hotamisligil

#17420

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Gökhan S. Hotamisligil is a Turkish-American physician scientist; James Stevens Simmons Chair of Genetics and Metabolism at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health ; Director of the Sabri Ülker Center for Metabolic Research and associate member of Harvard-MIT Broad Institute, Harvard Stem Cell Institute and the Joslin Diabetes Center.

#17410

Eric Lerner

#17421

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Eric J. Lerner is an American popular science writer and independent plasma researcher. He wrote the 1991 book The Big Bang Never Happened, which advocates Hannes Alfvén's plasma cosmology instead of the Big Bang theory. He is founder, president, and chief scientist of Lawrenceville Plasma Physics, Inc. now known as LPPFusion.

#17411

Susan Sherwin

#17422

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Susan Sherwin is a Canadian philosopher. Her pioneering work has shaped feminist theory, ethics and bioethics, and she is considered one of the world's foremost feminist ethicists. Education Sherwin received a B.A. in mathematics and philosophy from York University and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Stanford University . Her dissertation, “Moral Foundations of Feminism”, was written under the supervision of Thomas Schwartz, and was the first dissertation in the United States on feminist ethics. Sherwin also completed a post-doctoral fellowship in the Moral Problems of Medicine Project at Case ...

#17412

Wanda Półtawska

Wanda Półtawska

#17423

Overall Influence

1921 - Present (105 years)

Wanda Wiktoria Półtawska was a Polish physician, author, Holocaust survivor and pro-life activist. Biography Wanda Wiktoria Półtawska was born in Lublin, Poland on 2 November 1921. During World War II, she was interred at Ravensbrück concentration camp, just north of Berlin, having been arrested in February 1941 and charged with assisting the Polish resistance movement. She was used as a human guinea pig and became the subject of various medical experiments. She spent four years in the camp and afterwards wrote an account of her experiences, And I Am Afraid of My Dreams. In 1947 she married p...

#17413

Arun Jaitley

#17424

Overall Influence

1952 - 2019 (67 years)

Arun Jaitley was an Indian politician and attorney. A member of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Jaitley served as the Minister of Finance and Corporate Affairs of the Government of India from 2014 to 2019. Jaitley previously held the cabinet portfolios of Finance, Defence, Corporate Affairs, Commerce and Industry, and Law and Justice in the Vajpayee government and Narendra Modi government.

#17414

Frans Vanistendael

#17425

Overall Influence

1942 - 2021 (79 years)

Franciscus Vanistendael was a Belgian expert on tax law and former professor at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and the Brussels Tax College . Until 2005 he was dean of the law school of the KU Leuven. He was a member of the Coudenberg group, a Belgian federalist think tank. Frans Vanistendael is a brother of the writer Geert van Istendael.

#17415

Fabrice Bethuel

#17426

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Fabrice Bethuel is a French mathematician. He holds a chair at Paris VI University. Bethuel earned his doctorate at Paris-Sud 11 University in 1989, under supervision of Jean-Michel Coron. In 1998 Bethuel was an Invited Speaker of the International Congress of Mathematicians in Berlin. He won the 1999 Fermat Prize, jointly with Frédéric Hélein, for several important contributions to the theory of variational calculus. He also won the 2003 for his fundamental discoveries at the interface between analysis, topology, geometry, and physics.

#17416

Lester Hogan

#17427

Overall Influence

1920 - 2008 (88 years)

Clarence Lester Hogan was an American physicist and a pioneer in microwave and semiconductor technology. He grew up as a brother to three sisters in Great Falls, Montana, where his father worked for the Great Northern Railway. After graduating from Montana State University with a degree in chemical engineering he joined the United States Navy in 1942. He did some work on acoustic torpedoes in Chesapeake Bay, and when being approached by Bell Laboratories, subsequently went to the Pacific theatre to train submarine crews in the use of that technology.

#17417

Amy Grant

#17428

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Amy Lee Grant is an American singer-songwriter and musician. She began in contemporary Christian music before crossing over to pop music in the 1980s and 1990s. She has been referred to as "The Queen of Christian Pop".

#17418

Ethan Nadelmann

Ethan Nadelmann

#17429

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Ethan A. Nadelmann is the founder of the Drug Policy Alliance, a New York City-based non-profit organization working to end the War on Drugs. He is a supporter of the legalization of marijuana in America.

#17419

Jan Lindhe

#17430

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (91 years)

Jan Lindhe is a Swedish periodontist and a clinical research scientist specializing in periodontology. Education & career Lindhe graduated from the Royal School of Dentistry in Malmö, Sweden. He completed specialty training in oral surgery and periodontology at the University of Lund. He began his career as a professor of roentgenology in 1957 at Lund. The title of his 1964 doctoral thesis at Lund was Orthogonal cutting of dentine: a methodological study. He then became assistant professor of periodontology in 1964. In 1967, after spending 6 years studying oral radiology, oral surgery and pe...

#17420

Katherine Boo

#17431

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Katherine "Kate" J. Boo is an American investigative journalist who has documented the lives of people in poverty. She has won the MacArthur "genius" award and the National Book Award for Nonfiction , and her work earned the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for The Washington Post. She has been a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine since 2003. Her book Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity won nonfiction prizes from PEN, the Los Angeles Times Book Awards, the New York Public Library, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, in addition to t...

#17421

A. John Simmons

#17432

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Alan John Simmons is an American political philosopher. Simmons graduated from Princeton University and completed a master's degree and doctorate from Cornell University. He began teaching at the University of Virginia in 1976, where he was later named Commonwealth Professor of Philosophy, John Allen Hollingsworth Professor of Philosophy, and Professor of Law. Simmons has chaired Virginia's Philosophy Department and its Program in Political and Social Thought, and he received Virginia's All-University Teaching Award in that award's inaugural year. He taught Ethics as a special Consultant for six years at the F.B.I.

#17422

Mulugeta Bekele

Mulugeta Bekele

#17433

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Mulugeta Bekele is an Ethiopian scientist and academic. He is an associate Professor of Physics at Addis Ababa University , Ethiopia. He completed his PhD in Physics at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India in 1997. He has been awarded the Andrei Sakharov Prize by the American Physical Society "For tireless efforts in defense of human rights and freedom of expression and education anywhere in the world, and for inspiring students, colleagues and others to do the same." He is the president of Ethiopian Physical Society since October 1998 and an Associate Member of the Abdus Salam ...

#17423

DeMaurice Smith

DeMaurice Smith

#17434

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

DeMaurice F. "De" Smith is the former executive director of the National Football League Players Association . He was elected unanimously on March 15, 2009. He was replaced by Lloyd Howell Jr. on June 23, 2023. As executive director of the NFLPA during the 2011 NFL lockout, Smith played a major role in helping the players and NFL owners come to terms on a new collective bargaining agreement.

#17424

Martin Ravallion

Martin Ravallion

#17435

Overall Influence

1952 - 2022 (70 years)

Martin Ravallion was an Australian economist. He was the inaugural Edmond D. Villani Professor of Economics at Georgetown University, and had previously been director of the research department at the World Bank. He held a PhD in economics from the London School of Economics.

#17425

Shane Kimbrough

Shane Kimbrough

#17436

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Robert Shane Kimbrough is a retired United States Army officer and NASA astronaut. He was part of the first group of candidates selected for NASA astronaut training following the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster. Kimbrough is a veteran of three spaceflights, the first being a Space Shuttle flight, and the second being a six-month mission to the ISS on board a Russian Soyuz craft. He was the commander of the International Space Station for Expedition 50, and returned to Earth in April 2017. He is married to the former Robbie Lynn Nickels.

#17426

Sanford Kwinter

Sanford Kwinter

#17437

Overall Influence

Sanford Kwinter is a Canadian-born, New York–based writer and architectural theorist, and a co-founder of Zone Books publishers. Kwinter currently serves as Professor of Theory and Criticism at the Pratt Institute. He formerly served as an associate professor at Rice University in Houston, Texas, and has also taught at MIT, Columbia University and Cornell University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and at Harvard University Graduate School of Design.

#17427

Patrick Tambay

#17438

Overall Influence

1949 - 2022 (73 years)

Patrick Daniel Tambay was a French racing driver, commentator, and politician, who competed in 123 Formula One races between 1977 and 1986, securing five pole positions and winning twice. He gained training as a racing driver at Winfield Racing School in France in 1971. Between 1977 and 1981, he raced for an assortment of teams including Surtees, Theodore, Ligier, and McLaren with mixed results; he additionally won two Can Am championships under Carl Haas in 1977 and 1980. Tambay was hired by Scuderia Ferrari after his close friend Gilles Villeneuve died during the 1982 Belgian Grand Prix; he took his maiden victory four races later in Germany.

#17428

Huang Da

#17439

Overall Influence

1925 - 2023 (98 years)

Huang Da was a Chinese economist who was the president of Renmin University of China. He is regarded as the founder of modern financial research in China. Life and career Huang Da was born in Tianjin to an intellectual family in 1925. He was educated at Huabei Union University , later Renmin University of China. He was the president of Renmin University of China from 1991 to 1994. He was a founding member of the Monetary Policy Commission of the People's Bank of China, serving from 1997 to 1999.

#17429

Paul J. Watford

Paul J. Watford

#17440

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Paul Jeffrey Watford is an American lawyer who served as a United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit from 2012 to 2023. In February 2016, The New York Times identified Watford as a potential Supreme Court nominee to replace Justice Antonin Scalia.

#17430

Steven Orszag

#17441

Overall Influence

1943 - 2011 (68 years)

Steven Alan Orszag was an American mathematician. Life and career Orszag was born to a Jewish family in Manhattan, the son of Joseph Orszag, a lawyer. Orszag's paternal grandparents were emigrants from Hungary. Orszag was raised in Forest Hills, Queens and graduated from Forest Hills High School. In 1962, at the age of 19, he graduated with a B.S. in Mathematics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he was a member of the Pi Lambda Phi fraternity. He did post graduate study at Cambridge University and in 1966 graduated with a Ph.D. in astrophysics from Princeton University. His thesis adviser was Martin David Kruskal.

#17431

Jorge Pullin

#17442

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Jorge Pullin is an Argentine-American theoretical physicist known for his work on black hole collisions and quantum gravity. He is the Horace Hearne Chair in theoretical Physics at the Louisiana State University.

#17432

Michelle Francl

#17443

Overall Influence

Michelle M. Francl is an American chemist. Francl is a professor of chemistry, and has taught physical chemistry, general chemistry and mathematical modeling at Bryn Mawr College since 1986. Francl is noted for developing new methodology in computational chemistry, including the 6-31G* basis set for Na to Ar and electrostatic potential charges. She received a Ph.D. from the University of California, Irvine in 1983

#17433

Jaroslav Flegr

#17444

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Jaroslav Flegr is a Czech parasitologist, evolutionary biologist, and author of the book Frozen Evolution. He is professor of biology at the Faculty of Science, Charles University in Prague, and is a member of the editorial board of the journal Neuroendocrinology Letters.

#17434

Leona Lewis

#17445

Overall Influence

1985 - Present (41 years)

Leona Louise Lewis is a British singer, songwriter, actress, model and activist. Born and raised in Islington, Inner London, she attended the BRIT School for Performing Arts and Technology in Croydon. Lewis achieved national recognition when she won the third series of The X Factor in 2006, winning a £1 million recording contract with Syco Music. Her winner's single, a cover of Kelly Clarkson's "A Moment Like This", peaked at number one for four weeks on the UK Singles Chart and broke a world record by reaching 50,000 digital downloads within 30 minutes. In February 2007, Lewis signed a five...

#17435

Robert C. Dynes

#17446

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Robert Carr Dynes is a Canadian-American physicist, researcher, and academic administrator, and professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and the former president of the University of California system, and former chancellor of the University of California San Diego.

#17436

Sean Kelly

#17447

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Seán Kelly was a Canadian humorist and writer. Biography Sean was born on a farm in Cushing, Quebec on July 22, 1940. After graduating from Loyola College he worked as a radio actor, advertising copywriter, schoolteacher and on a quiz show.

#17437

George Wilson Pierson

#17448

Overall Influence

1904 - 1993 (89 years)

George Wilson Pierson was an American academic, historian, author and Larned Professor of History at Yale University. He was the first official historian of the university. Family life Pierson was a descendant of Yale's first rector, Abraham Pierson, and he was related to the college's first student. He was the son of Charles Wheeler Pierson, a New York lawyer who had been valedictorian of the Class of 1886. Like his father, Pierson was at the top of his undergraduate class in 1926.

#17438

Donald P. Greenberg

#17449

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (92 years)

Donald Peter Greenberg is the Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Computer Graphics at Cornell University. Early life Greenberg earned his undergraduate and Ph.D. degrees from Cornell University, where he played on the tennis and soccer teams and was a member of Tau Delta Phi and the Quill and Dagger society.

#17439

Gregory Baum

#17450

Overall Influence

1923 - 2017 (94 years)

Gerhard Albert Baum , better known as Gregory Baum, was a German-born Canadian priest and theologian in the Catholic Church. He became known in North America and Europe in the 1960s for his work on ecumenism, interfaith dialogue, and the relationship between the Catholic Church and Jews. In the later 1960s, he went to the New School for Social Theory in New York and became a sociologist, which led to his work on creating a dialogue between classical sociology and Christian theology.

#17440

Ed Yong

#17451

Overall Influence

1981 - Present (45 years)

Edmund Soon-Weng Yong is a British-American science journalist and author. He is a staff member at The Atlantic, which he joined in 2015. In 2021, he received a Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for a series on the COVID-19 pandemic.

#17441

Catherine Verfaillie

#17452

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Catherine M. Verfaillie obtained an M.D. from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in 1982. After graduation, she specialized in internal medicine and in 1987. Currently she works as a Belgian molecular biologist and professor at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven . Her work on the ability of adult stem cells to differentiate to different cell types has garnered controversy due to accusations of poor laboratory practices and fabrication of data by members of her laboratory. In 2019, it was shown that several of her more recent papers also contained altered images and potential fraud was committed.

#17442

Ray Lewis

#17453

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Raymond Anthony Lewis Jr. is a former American football linebacker who played his entire 17-year career for the Baltimore Ravens of the National Football League . He played college football for the Miami Hurricanes, where he earned All-America honors.

#17443

Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski

Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski

#17454

Overall Influence

1993 - Present (33 years)

Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski is an American theoretical physicist from Chicago who studies high energy physics. She describes herself as "a proud first-generation Cuban-American and Chicago Public Schools alumna". She completed her undergraduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology at age 19, earned her PhD from Harvard University at 25 and was a PCTS Postdoctoral Fellow at Princeton University before joining the faculty of the Perimeter Institute at age 27. According to Google Trends, Pasterski was the #3 Trending Scientist for all of 2017. In 2015, she was named to the Forb...

#17444

Charles O. Jones

#17455

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (95 years)

Charles O. Jones is non-resident Senior Fellow at the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. He is a graduate of the University of South Dakota and the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He has been a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Guggenheim fellow. He is a leading scholar of American politics. He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow in the Governmental Studies Program at The Brookings Institution. Jones has written or edited 18 books and contributed over 100 articles and book chapters.

#17445

John D. Bransford

#17456

Overall Influence

1943 - 2022 (79 years)

John D. Bransford was an emeritus professor of education at the University of Washington College of Education in Seattle, Washington. He was the Founding Director of The Learning in Informal and Formal Environments Center, and a Centennial Professor and former director of the Learning Technology Center at Vanderbilt University. Dr. Bransford was a member Emeritus of the National Academy of Education and the 2001 recipient of the E. L. Thorndike Career Achievement Award. He died on April 11, 2022, at the age of 78.

#17446

Naomi Osaka

#17457

Overall Influence

1997 - Present (29 years)

is a Japanese professional tennis player. She has been ranked world No. 1 in singles by the Women's Tennis Association and is the first Asian player to hold the top ranking in singles. Osaka is a four-time Grand Slam singles champion, with two Australian Open and two US Open titles. Her seven titles on the WTA Tour also include two at the Premier Mandatory level. At the 2018 US Open and the 2019 Australian Open, Osaka won her first two major titles in back-to-back tournaments. She was the first woman to win successive major singles titles since Serena Williams in 2015, and the first to win he...

#17447

Chen Chi-kwan

#17458

Overall Influence

1921 - 2007 (86 years)

Chen Chi-kwan was a Taiwanese artist, architect, and educator, particularly for his paintings and architectural work for Tunghai University. He collaborated with I.M. Pei to design the Luce Memorial Chapel on the university campus, a hallmark of mid-century modernist architecture completed in 1963.

#17448

Hermann Nicolai

#17459

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Hermann Nicolai is a German theoretical physicist and director emeritus at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Potsdam-Golm. Education and career At Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Hermann Nicolai, beginning in 1971, studied physics and mathematics with a Diplom in 1975 with a doctorate in 1978 under the supervision of Julius Wess. At Heidelberg University, Nicolai was from 1978 to 1979 an assistant in theoretical physics. From 1979 to 1986, he worked at CERN in Geneva as a staff member in the theory department. In 1983 he received his habilitation at Heidelberg University.

#17449

Mary Tiles

#17460

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Mary Tiles is a philosopher and historian of mathematics and science. From 2006 until 2009, she served as chair of the philosophy department of the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She retired in 2009.

#17450

Eduardo Schwartz

#17461

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Eduardo Saul Schwartz is a professor of finance at SFU's Beedie School of Business, where he holds the Ryan Beedie Chair in Finance. He is also a Distinguished Research Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is known for pioneering research in several areas of finance, particularly derivatives. His major contributions include: the real options method of pricing investments under uncertainty; the Longstaff–Schwartz model - a multi-factor short-rate model; the Longstaff-Schwartz method for valuing American options by Monte Carlo Simulation; the use of Finite difference met...

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