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

#17901

Rudolph F. Peters

#17912

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Rudolph "Ruud" F. Peters was a scholar of Islamic Law at the University of Amsterdam. Rudolph Peters studied Law, Arabic and Turkish in Amsterdam and Leiden and was appointed as lecturer at the department of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Amsterdam in 1968. He completed his PhD in 1979, titled Islam and Colonialism: The Doctrine of Jihad in Modern History. He served as the director of the Netherlands Institute for Archeology and Arabic Studies in Cairo from 1982 to 1987, and was appointed professor to the UvA in 1992.

#17902

Toshio Okada

#17913

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Toshio Okada is an anime producer, author, and lecturer. He is a co-founder and former president of the production company Gainax. He is portrayed by actor Gaku Hamada in the 2014 TV Drama Aoi Honō based on the autobiographical manga by his fellow Kazuhiko Shimamoto. He is representative director of Otaking Inc. and Cloud City Inc., as well as the founder of FREEex Inc. He also served as a part-time lecturer at the University of Tokyo's college of art and sciences and as a visiting scholar at Osaka University of Arts' character creative arts department.

#17903

Michael J. Perry

#17914

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Michael J. Perry is an American legal scholar, specializing in constitutional law, human rights, and law and religion. Career Perry was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky. He did his undergraduate studies, majoring in philosophy and minoring in theology, at Georgetown University . He studied law at Columbia University School of Law . Perry then served as law clerk to U.S. District Judge Jack B. Weinstein and, a year later, to U.S. Circuit Judge Shirley M. Hufstedler .

#17904

Pierre Milza

#17915

Overall Influence

1932 - 2018 (86 years)

Pierre Milza was a French historian. His work focused mainly on the history of Italy, the history of Italian immigration to France and the history of fascism, of which he was a recognized specialist.

#17905

Andrew Hacker

#17916

Overall Influence

1929 - Present (97 years)

Andrew Hacker is an American political scientist and public intellectual. He is currently Professor Emeritus in the Department of Political Science at Queens College in New York. He did his undergraduate work at Amherst College, followed by graduate work at Oxford University, University of Michigan, and Princeton University, where he received his PhD degree. Hacker taught at Cornell before taking his current position at Queens. He is the son of Louis M. Hacker.

#17906

Stuart J. Ritchie

#17917

Overall Influence

Stuart James Ritchie is a Scottish psychologist and science communicator known for his research in human intelligence. He has served as a lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London since the summer of 2018. He was previously active in researching intelligence as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Edinburgh. In 2021, his book Science Fictions was nominated for the £25,000 Royal Society Prize for Science Books but lost out to Merlin Sheldrake's Entangled Life. Ritchie writes a newsletter titled Science Fictions for the newspaper i w...

#17907

René Lemarchand

#17918

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (94 years)

René Lemarchand is a French-American political scientist who is known for his research on ethnic conflict and genocide in Rwanda, Burundi and Darfur. Publishing in both English and French, he is particularly known for his work on the concept of clientelism. He is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Florida, and continues to write, teach internationally and consult. Since retiring he has worked for USAID out of Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire as a Regional Consultant for West Africa in Governance and Democracy, and as Democracy and Governance advisor to USAID / Ghana.

#17908

Frank Neese

#17919

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Frank Neese is a German theoretical chemist at the Max Planck Institute for Coal Research. He is the author of more than 440 scientific articles in journals of Chemistry, Biochemistry and Physics. His work focuses on the theory of magnetic spectroscopies and their experimental and theoretical application, local pair natural orbital correlation theories, spectroscopy oriented configuration interaction, electronic and geometric structure and reactivity of transition metal complexes and metalloenzymes. He is lead author of the ORCA quantum chemistry computer program. His methods have been applie...

#17909

Xu Guangxian

#17920

Overall Influence

1920 - 2015 (95 years)

Xu Guangxian , also known as Kwang-hsien Hsu, was a Chinese chemist. He was an academician of the Chinese Academy of Science who is respected for his contributions in both theoretical and experimental chemistry. He is a former president of the Chinese Chemical Society, and is known as "The Father of Chinese Rare Earths Chemistry".

#17910

Es'kia Mphahlele

Es'kia Mphahlele

#17921

Overall Influence

1919 - 2008 (89 years)

Es'kia Mphahlele was a South African writer, educationist, artist and activist celebrated as the Father of African Humanism and one of the founding figures of modern African literature. He was given the name Ezekiel Mphahlele at birth but changed his name to Es'kia in 1977. His journey from a childhood in the slums of Pretoria to a literary icon was an odyssey both intellectually and politically. As a writer, he brought his own experiences in and outside South Africa to bear on his short stories, fiction, autobiography and history, developing the concept of African humanism. He skilfully evoked the black experience under apartheid in Down Second Avenue .

#17911

John Chamberlain

John Chamberlain

#17922

Overall Influence

1927 - 2011 (84 years)

John Angus Chamberlain , was an American sculptor and filmmaker. At the time of his death he resided and worked on Shelter Island, New York. Early life and career Born in Rochester, Indiana as the son of a saloonkeeper, Chamberlain was raised mostly by his grandmother after his parents divorced. He spent much of his youth in Chicago. After serving in the U.S. Navy from 1943 to 1946, he attended the Art Institute of Chicago and Black Mountain College . At Black Mountain, he studied with the poets Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, and Robert Duncan, who were teaching there that semester. The follo...

#17912

Henry Holland

#17923

Overall Influence

1983 - Present (43 years)

Henry Holland is an English fashion designer, businessman and blogger from Ramsbottom, Greater Manchester. Early life and education Holland is a graduate of the BA Journalism course at the London College of Communication and has worked for the following publications: the teenage Sneak magazine , Smash Hits and Bliss. He is openly gay.

#17913

Matt Bondurant

#17924

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Matt Bondurant is an American novelist. Among his works are the books The Third Translation, The Wettest County in the World, The Night Swimmer, and Oleander City Life and career Bondurant was born and raised in Alexandria, Virginia, near Washington, D.C. He graduated with a B.A. and M.A. in English from James Madison University, where he was a member of Pi Kappa Phi fraternity. Bondurant went on to earn a PhD in English at Florida State University in 2003.

#17914

Patrick T. Harker

#17925

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Patrick Timothy Harker is the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. Harker previously served as the President of University of Delaware. He was the dean of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania from 2001 to 2007. He began his presidency of the University of Delaware in 2007 and resigned in 2015.

#17915

Henk Tijms

#17926

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Henk Tijms is a Dutch mathematician and Emeritus Professor of Operations Research at the VU University Amsterdam. He studied mathematics in Amsterdam where he graduated from the University of Amsterdam in 1972 under supervision of Gijsbert de Leve.

#17916

Paul W. Kahn

#17927

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Paul W. Kahn is the Robert W. Winner Professor of Law and the Humanities at Yale Law School and the director of the Orville H. Schell, Jr. Center for International Human Rights. Biography Kahn received his Bachelor of Arts from the University of Chicago in 1973, his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1977, and his Juris Doctor from Yale Law School in 1980.

#17917

Jon Voight

#17928

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Jonathan Vincent Voight is an American actor. Voight is associated with the angst and unruliness that typified the late-1960s counterculture. He has received numerous accolades including an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, and four Golden Globe Awards as well as nominations for four Primetime Emmy Awards. In 2019, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts.

#17918

Henrik Syse

#17929

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Henrik Syse is a Norwegian philosopher, author, and lecturer. He is a research professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo , and a part-time Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at Bjørknes College in Oslo. He was a member of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, which awards the Nobel Peace Prize, from 2015 to 2020, and was a member of the Norwegian Press Complaints Commission from 2002 to 2016. Syse also teaches at the Norwegian Defence University College, BI Norwegian Business School, MF Norwegian School of Theology, the University of Oslo, and other institutions of higher learning, and he ...

#17919

Richard Lowitt

#17930

Overall Influence

1922 - 2018 (96 years)

Richard Lowitt was an American historian. He was a professor of American History at Iowa State University, the University of Oklahoma, and the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma, and the author of several books about the American West.

#17920

Nathan Englander

Nathan Englander

#17931

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Nathan Englander is an American short story writer and novelist. His debut short story collection, For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, was published by Alfred A. Knopf, in 1999. His second collection, What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank, won the 2012 Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

#17921

Herman Verlinde

#17932

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Herman Louis Verlinde is a Dutch theoretical physicist and string theorist. He is the Class of 1909 Professor of Physics at Princeton University, where he is also the chair of the Department of Physics. He is the identical twin brother of Erik Verlinde.

#17922

Arthur J. Deikman

#17933

Overall Influence

1929 - 2013 (84 years)

Arthur J. Deikman was an American physician who was a clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, and a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Humanistic Psychology and Human Givens. He was also a contributor to The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease.

#17923

Harald Weinrich

#17934

Overall Influence

1927 - 2022 (95 years)

Harald Weinrich was a German classical scholar, scholar of Romance philology and philosopher, known for the breadth of his writings. Biography He was emeritus professor of the Collège de France, and held the chair of Romance literature from 1992 to 1998.

#17924

Anatoly Torkunov

#17935

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Anatoly Vasilyevich Torkunov is a Russian diplomat and international relations scholar. The rector of Moscow's State Institute of International Relations, Torkunov is a member of the Presidium of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Collegium of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation. He is the President of MGIMO Endowment Fund. He serves as chairman of the United Nations Association of Russia. He was a co-president of the Trianon Dialogue, Russian-French civil societies forum .

#17925

Jonathan Pila

#17936

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Jonathan Solomon Pila FRS is an Australian mathematician at the University of Oxford. Education Pila earned his bachelor's degree at the University of Melbourne in 1984. He was awarded a PhD from Stanford University in 1988, for research supervised by Peter Sarnak. His dissertation was entitled "Frobenius Maps of Abelian Varieties and Finding Roots of Unity in Finite Fields". In 2010 he received an MA from Oxford.

#17926

David Krakauer

#17937

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

David Krakauer is an American evolutionary biologist. He is the President and William H. Miller Professor of Complex Systems at the Santa Fe Institute. Biography Born in Hawaii, Krakauer grew up in southern Portugal and moved to London, England, for secondary school.

#17927

James Charles Phillips

#17938

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (93 years)

James Charles Phillips is an American physicist and a member of the National Academy of Sciences . Phillips invented the exact theory of the ionicity of chemical bonding in semiconductors, as well as new theories of compacted networks .

#17928

Frank Nabarro

#17939

Overall Influence

1916 - 2006 (90 years)

Frank Reginald Nunes Nabarro MBE OMS FRS was an English-born South African physicist and one of the pioneers of solid-state physics, which underpins much of 21st-century technology. Education Born 7 March 1916 in London, UK, into a Sephardi Jewish family, he studied at Nottingham High School, then at New College, Oxford where he obtained a first-class honours degree in physics in 1937 and another in mathematics in 1938. At the University of Bristol his work under Professor Nevill Francis Mott, a future Nobel Laureate in physics, earned him the Oxford degree of BSc . Then followed an M.A. in 1945.

#17929

Alicia Shepard

#17940

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Alicia Cobb "Lisa" Shepard was an American journalist, media writer and expert on the work and lives of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. In February 2014, she moved to Kabul, Afghanistan to work with Afghan journalists. In fall 2012, she joined the University of Nevada, Las Vegas faculty as a visiting professor for the Greenspun College of Urban Affairs.

#17930

Frederick Vine

#17941

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Frederick John Vine FRS is an English marine geologist and geophysicist. He made key contributions to the theory of plate tectonics, helping to show that the seafloor spreads from mid-ocean ridges with a symmetrical pattern of magnetic reversals in the basalt rocks on either side.

#17931

Lee C. Teng

#17942

Overall Influence

1926 - Present (100 years)

Lee C. Teng was a Chinese-born physicist known for his work with the Advanced Photon Source of the Argonne National Laboratory. He has made numerous contributions to the field of accelerator physics.

#17932

Landon Donovan

#17943

Overall Influence

1982 - Present (44 years)

Landon Timothy Donovan is an American former professional soccer player. Donovan is also the co-founder and vice-president of soccer operations for USL Championship side San Diego Loyal SC, and serves as a strategic advisor for English side Lincoln City. Considered as the greatest American player of all time, he is frequently debated with Clint Dempsey for the title. Donovan holds the world record for the most international assists and is tied with Dempsey for the most international goals scored by an American player .

#17933

Milton Meltzer

#17944

Overall Influence

1915 - 2009 (94 years)

Milton Meltzer was an American historian and author best known for his nonfiction books on Jewish, African-American, and American history. Since the 1950s, he was a prolific author of history books in the children's literature and young adult literature genres, having written nearly 100 books. Meltzer was an advocate for human rights, as well as an adjunct professor for the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He won the biennial Laura Ingalls Wilder Award for his career contribution to American children's literature in 2001. Meltzer died of esophageal cancer in 2009.

#17934

Elissa L. Newport

#17945

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Elissa Lee Newport is a professor of neurology and director of the Center for Brain Plasticity and Recovery at Georgetown University. She specializes in language acquisition and developmental psycholinguistics, focusing on the relationship between language development and language structure, and most recently on the effects of pediatric stroke on the organization and recovery of language.

#17935

Gianfranco Pasquino

#17946

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Gianfranco Pasquino is an Italian political scientist. Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Bologna and Senior Adjunct Professor at SAIS-Europe . He studied at the University of Turin under Norberto Bobbio and specialized under Giovanni Sartori at the University of Florence. In his professional life, he has been associated with the University of Florence, Harvard University, University of California, Los Angeles and the School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC and Fellow of Christchurch and St Antony's at Oxford and Life Fellow of Claire Hall, Cambri...

#17936

Alurista

#17947

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Alberto Baltazar Urista Heredia , better known by his nom de plume Alurista, is an American poet and activist. His work was influential in the Chicano Movement and is important to the field of Chicano poetry.

#17937

Jessica Simpson

#17948

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (46 years)

Jessica Ann Simpson is an American singer, actress, and businesswoman. After performing in church choirs as a child, Simpson signed with Columbia Records in 1997, aged seventeen. Her debut studio album, Sweet Kisses , sold two million copies in the United States and saw the commercial success of the single "I Wanna Love You Forever". Simpson adopted a more mature image for her second studio album, Irresistible , and its title track became her second top 20 entry on the Billboard Hot 100, while the album was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America . In This Skin , Simps...

#17938

Mesut Özil

#17949

Overall Influence

1988 - Present (38 years)

Mesut Özil is a German former professional footballer who played as an attacking midfielder. Known for his technical skills, creativity, passing skills, and vision, he is widely regarded as one of the greatest midfielders and playmakers of his generation. He could also play as a wide midfielder.

#17939

Jack Morava

#17950

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Jack Johnson Morava is an American homotopy theorist at Johns Hopkins University. Education Of Czech and Appalachian descent, he was raised in Texas' lower Rio Grande valley. An early interest in topology was strongly encouraged by his parents. He enrolled at Rice University in 1962 as a physics major, but entered the graduate mathematics program in 1964. His advisor Eldon Dyer arranged, with the support of Michael Atiyah, a one-year fellowship at the University of Oxford, followed by a year in Princeton at the Institute for Advanced Study.

#17940

Avrion Mitchison

#17951

Overall Influence

1928 - 2022 (94 years)

Avrion Mitchison was a British zoologist and immunologist. Biography Mitchison was born in 1928, the son of the Labour politician Dick Mitchison and his wife, the writer Naomi . His uncle was the biologist J.B.S. Haldane and his grandfather the physiologist John Scott Haldane. His elder brothers are the bacteriologist Denis Mitchison and the zoologist Murdoch Mitchison.

#17941

Leopoldo Nachbin

Leopoldo Nachbin

#17952

Overall Influence

1922 - 1993 (71 years)

Leopoldo Nachbin was a Jewish-Brazilian mathematician who dealt with topology, and harmonic analysis. Nachbin was born in Recife, and is best known for Nachbin's theorem. He died, aged 71, in Rio de Janeiro.

#17942

Maxine Berg

#17953

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Maxine Louise Berg, is a British historian and academic. Since 1998, she has been a professor of history at the University of Warwick. She has taught at Warwick since 1978, joining the Department of Economics, before transferring to History. She is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Royal Historical Society.

#17943

David R. Liu

#17954

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

David Ruchien Liu is an American molecular biologist and chemist. He is the Richard Merkin Professor, Director of the Merkin Institute of Transformative Technologies in Healthcare, and Vice-Chair of the Faculty at the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT; Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of the Natural Sciences and Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University; and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator.

#17944

John Boorman

#17955

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (93 years)

Sir John Boorman is a British filmmaker. He is best known for directing feature films such as Point Blank , Hell in the Pacific , Deliverance , Zardoz , Exorcist II: The Heretic , Excalibur , The Emerald Forest , Hope and Glory , The General , The Tailor of Panama and Queen and Country .

#17945

Dominic Sandbrook

#17956

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Dominic Christopher Sandbrook is a British historian, author, columnist and television presenter. He co-hosts The Rest is History podcast with the author Tom Holland. Early life and career Born in Bridgnorth, Shropshire, he attended Malvern College and studied history and French at Balliol College, Oxford. He then studied for a master's degree in history at the University of St Andrews and a PhD at Jesus College, Cambridge.

#17946

Conor Gearty

#17957

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Conor A. Gearty KC , is the Professor of Human Rights Law at LSE Department of Law. From 2002 to 2009, he was Director of the Centre for the Study of Human Rights at the London School of Economics. His academic research focuses primarily on civil liberties, terrorism and human rights.

#17947

Robert Wilensky

#17958

Overall Influence

1951 - 2013 (62 years)

Robert Wilensky was an American computer scientist and emeritus professor at the UC Berkeley School of Information, with his main focus of research in artificial intelligence. Academic career In 1971, Wilensky received his bachelor's degree in mathematics from Yale University, and in 1978, a Ph.D. in computer science from the same institution. After finishing his thesis, "Understanding Goal-Based Stories", Wilensky joined the faculty from the EECS Department of UC Berkeley. In 1986, he worked as the doctoral advisor of Peter Norvig, who then later published the standard textbook of the field:...

#17948

Marv Wolfman

#17959

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Marvin Arthur Wolfman is an American comic book and novelization writer. He worked on Marvel Comics's The Tomb of Dracula, for which he and artist Gene Colan created the vampire-slayer Blade, and DC Comics's The New Teen Titans and the Crisis on Infinite Earths limited series with George Pérez.

#17949

Phil Bernstein

#17960

Overall Influence

Philip Alan Bernstein is a computer scientist specializing in database research in the Database Group of Microsoft Research. Bernstein is also an affiliate professor at the University of Washington and frequent committee member or chair of conferences such as VLDB and SIGMOD. He won the SIGMOD Edgar F. Codd Innovations Award in 1994, and in 2011 with Jayant Madhavan and Erhard Rahm the VLDB 10 Year Best Paper Award for their VLDB 2001 paper "Generic Schema Matching with Cupid".

#17950

Santha Rama Rau

Santha Rama Rau

#17961

Overall Influence

1923 - 2009 (86 years)

Santha Rama Rau was an Indian-born American writer. Early life and background While Santha's father was a Chitrapur Saraswat Brahmin from Canara whose mother-tongue was Konkani, her mother was a Kashmiri Brahmin from the far north of India, who had however grown up in Hubli.

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