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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Ranking

List of the most influential people

#18001

Arno Motulsky

#18012

Overall Influence

1923 - 2018 (95 years)

Arno Gunther Motulsky was a professor of medical genetics and genome sciences at the University of Washington. Motulsky is considered a founder of the field of medical genetics. He is also considered the "father of pharmacogenetics", and is credited with coining the term.[2]

#18002

Hewitt Crane

#18013

Overall Influence

1927 - 2008 (81 years)

Hewitt D. Crane was an American engineer best known for his pioneering work at SRI International on ERMA , for Bank of America, magnetic digital logic, neuristor logic, the development of an eye-movement tracking device, and a pen-input device for computers.

#18003

Angelo Mangiarotti

Angelo Mangiarotti

#18014

Overall Influence

1921 - 2012 (91 years)

Angelo Mangiarotti was an Italian architect and industrial designer. His designs were mostly for industrial buildings and railway stations. In 1994 he received the Compasso d'Oro award of the Associazione per il Disegno Industriale for his lifetime of achievement.

#18004

James Densley

#18015

Overall Influence

1982 - Present (44 years)

James Densley is a British-American sociologist and Professor of Criminal Justice at Metropolitan State University. He is best known as co-founder of The Violence Project and as co-author of the bestselling book, The Violence Project: How To Stop a Mass Shooting Epidemic. Densley has also published extensively on street gang issues and has been described as "among the most accomplished rising leaders of modern gang research in criminology." He was one of the top 250 most cited criminologists in the world in 2019.

#18005

Jürgen Herzog

#18016

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Jürgen Reinhard Gerhard Herzog is an Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at University of Duisburg-Essen, in Essen, Germany. From 1969 to 1975, he was Lecturer at University of Regensburg and from 1975 to 2009 a professor of Mathematics at University of Duisburg-Essen.

#18006

David Chilton

#18017

Overall Influence

1951 - 1997 (46 years)

David Harold Chilton was an American pastor, Reconstructionist, speaker and author of several books on economics, eschatology and Christian Worldview from Placerville, California. He contributed three books on eschatology: Paradise Restored , The Days of Vengeance , and The Great Tribulation .

#18007

Minae Mizumura

#18018

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

is a Japanese novelist. Among other literary awards, she has won the Noma Literary New Face Prize and the Yomiuri Prize. Early life Born into a middle-class family in Tokyo, she moved to Long Island, New York at the age of twelve. Her years of reading and re-reading European literature during her childhood in post war Japan, and modern Japanese literature while attending American high school, later became the foundation for her novels. After studying studio art at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and French at Sorbonne in Paris, she went on to Yale College, majoring in French. W...

#18008

Richard Parker

#18019

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Richard Parker is an economist from the United States. He is a graduate of Dartmouth College and the University of Oxford, and has worked for the United Nations Development Programme. Parker co-founded Mother Jones magazine and is on the editorial board of The Nation. He wrote the books The Myth of the Middle Class, Mixed Signals: the Future of Global Television News, and John Kenneth Galbraith: His Life, His Politics, His Economics.

#18009

Howard Bragman

#18020

Overall Influence

1956 - 2023 (67 years)

Howard Benjamin Bragman was an American crisis manager, public relations practitioner, writer and lecturer. He was often seen as a "PR guru". Bragman later served as chairman of LaBrea Media, a crisis management company he founded in 2018.

#18010

Wilson Tucker

#18021

Overall Influence

1914 - 2006 (92 years)

Arthur Wilson "Bob" Tucker was an American author who became well known as a writer of mystery, action adventure, and science fiction under the name Wilson Tucker. Tucker was also a prominent member of science fiction fandom, who wrote extensively for fanzines under the name Bob Tucker, a family nickname bestowed in childhood . He became a prominent analyst and critic of the field, as well as the coiner of such terms as "space opera".

#18011

Chris McHugh

#18022

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Chris McHugh is an American musician from Camden, NJ. He began his career as the drummer of Christian rock band White Heart from 1986 to 1989. McHugh toured and played as a session drummer with artists such as Aaron Neville, Peter Frampton, Jewel , Alabama Kenny Rogers, LeAnn Rimes, Brooks & Dunn and numerous others. His recording credits span over 40 years with 93 platinum and 15 gold certifications. Cited: Credits, Muso

#18012

J Balvin

#18023

Overall Influence

1985 - Present (41 years)

José Álvaro Osorio Balvín , known professionally as J Balvin, is a Colombian singer. He has been referred to as the "Prince of Reggaeton" , and is one of the best-selling Latin artists, with over 35 million records sold worldwide. Balvin was born in Medellín. At age 17, he moved to the United States to learn English, where he lived in both Oklahoma and New York. He then returned to Medellín and gained popularity performing at clubs in the city.

#18013

Hervé Jacquet

#18024

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Hervé Jacquet is a French American mathematician, working in automorphic forms. He is considered one of the founders of the theory of automorphic representations and their associated L-functions, and his results play a central role in modern number theory.

#18014

Robert Bruce Findler

#18025

Overall Influence

Robert Bruce Findler, colloquially known as "Robby", is an American computer scientist, currently, a professor of computer science at Northwestern University. He is also a member of the PLT group and, as such, responsible for the creation and maintenance of DrRacket. In addition to DrRacket, Findler has contributed numerous components to Racket and supervises its Web-based software library, called PLaneT. Findler is also a leading team member of the ProgramByDesign project.

#18015

Paul Roderick Gregory

#18026

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Paul Roderick Gregory is a professor of economics at the University of Houston, Texas, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and a research fellow at the German Institute for Economic Research. He has written about Russia and the Soviet Union.

#18016

Ronald H. Nash

#18027

Overall Influence

1936 - 2006 (70 years)

Ronald H. Nash was a philosophy professor at Reformed Theological Seminary. Nash served as a professor for over 40 years, teaching and writing in the areas of worldview, apologetics, ethics, theology, and history. He is known for his advocacy of Austrian economics, and his criticism of the evangelical left.

#18017

Richard Askey

#18028

Overall Influence

1933 - 2019 (86 years)

Richard Allen Askey was an American mathematician, known for his expertise in the area of special functions. The Askey–Wilson polynomials Askey scheme, which organizes orthogonal polynomials- Askey earned a B.A. at Washington University in St. Louis in 1955, an M.A. at Harvard University in 1956, and a Ph.D. at Princeton University in 1961. After working as an instructor at Washington University and University of Chicago , he joined the faculty of the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1963 as an Assistant Professor of Mathematics. He became a full professor at Wisconsin in 1968, and since 2003 was a professor emeritus.

#18018

Wayne E. Meyer

#18029

Overall Influence

1926 - 2009 (83 years)

Rear Admiral Wayne Eugene Meyer is regarded as the "Father of Aegis" for his 13 years of service as the Aegis Weapon System Manager and later the founding project manager of the Aegis Shipbuilding Project Office. He retired from the United States Navy in 1985 as the Deputy Commander for Weapons and Combat Systems, Naval Sea Systems, Naval Sea Systems Command and Ordnance Officer of the Navy.

#18019

Christopher Duffy

#18030

Overall Influence

1936 - 2022 (86 years)

Christopher Duffy was a British military historian. Duffy read history at Balliol College, Oxford, where he graduated in 1961 with the DPhil. Afterwards, he taught military history at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and the college of the British General Staff. He was secretary-general of the British Commission for Military History and vice-president of the Military History Society of Ireland. From 1996 to 2001, he was research professor at the De Montfort University, Leicester. He then worked as a freelance author.

#18020

Roberto Tamassia

#18031

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Roberto Tamassia is an American Italian computer scientist, the Plastech Professor of Computer Science at Brown University, and served as the chair of the Brown Computer Science department from 2007 to 2014. His research specialty is in the design and analysis of algorithms for graph drawing, computational geometry, and computer security; he is also the author of several textbooks.

#18021

Ranko Matasović

#18032

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Ranko Matasović is a Croatian linguist, Indo-Europeanist, and Celticist. Biography Matasović was born and raised in Zagreb, where he attended primary and secondary school. In the Faculty of philosophy at the University of Zagreb, he graduated in linguistics and philosophy, receiving an M.A. in linguistics in 1992 and a Ph.D. in 1995 under the supervision of Radoslav Katičić with the thesis A Theory of Textual Reconstruction in Indo-European Linguistics. He has received research fellowships at the University of Vienna and the University of Oxford , a post-doctoral Fulbright Fellowship at the ...

#18022

B. Joseph White

B. Joseph White

#18033

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Bernard Joseph White is president emeritus of the University of Illinois and professor emeritus of business at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. He is dean emeritus of the Stephen M. Ross School of Business and professor emeritus of business administration at the University of Michigan, where he also served as interim president, and Wilbur K. Pierpont Collegiate Professor of Leadership in Management Education. He is the author of The Nature of Leadership and Boards That Excel: Candid Insights and Practical Advice for Directors. Boards That Excel was named Governance Book of the...

#18023

Sam Ruby

#18034

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Sam Ruby is a prominent software developer who has made significant contributions to web standards and open source software projects. In particular he has contributed to the standardization of syndicated web feeds via his involvement with the Atom standard and the Feed Validator web service.

#18024

Dana Randall

#18035

Overall Influence

1901 - Present (125 years)

Dana Randall is an American computer scientist. She works as the ADVANCE Professor of Computing, and adjunct professor of mathematics at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She is also an External Professor of the Santa Fe Institute. Previously she was executive director of the Georgia Tech Institute of Data Engineering and Science that she co-founded, and director of the Algorithms and Randomness Center. Her research include combinatorics, computational aspects of statistical mechanics, Monte Carlo stimulation of Markov chains, and randomized algorithms.

#18025

Alex Salmond

#18036

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Alexander Elliot Anderson Salmond is a Scottish politician, economist and television host, who served as First Minister of Scotland from 2007 to 2014. A prominent figure in the Scottish nationalist movement, he has served as Leader of the Alba Party since 2021. Salmond was leader of the Scottish National Party , on two occasions, from 1990 to 2000 and from 2004 to 2014. He served as the party's depute leader from 1987 to 1990. Salmond hosted The Alex Salmond Show on RT UK. He currently hosts Scotland Speaks with Alex Salmond .

#18026

Roberta Vinci

#18037

Overall Influence

1983 - Present (43 years)

Roberta Vinci is an Italian professional padel and former tennis player. In doubles tennis, she won five major tournaments and reached the world No. 1 position. She also reached a career-high singles ranking of world No. 7, in May 2016. She is the fourth Italian woman to reach the top 10 in singles, after Flavia Pennetta, Francesca Schiavone and Sara Errani. At 33 years and 4 days old, she became the oldest player ever to debut in the top 10.

#18027

Joan Fuster

#18038

Overall Influence

1922 - 1992 (70 years)

Joan Fuster i Ortells was an influential Spanish writer. He is considered a major writer in the Valencian language , and his work contributed to reinvigorate left-wing, pro-Catalan nationalism in Valencia during the Spanish transition to democracy. In his influential political essay Nosaltres, els valencians he coined the term Països Catalans to refer to the Catalan-speaking territories.

#18028

Linda Colley

#18039

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Dame Linda Jane Colley, is an expert on British, imperial and global history from 1700. She is Shelby M. C. Davis 1958 Professor of History at Princeton University and a long-term fellow in history at the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in Uppsala. She previously held chairs at Yale University and at the London School of Economics. Her work frequently approaches the past from inter-disciplinary perspectives.

#18029

Jeffrey J. Kripal

#18040

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Jeffrey John Kripal is an American college professor. He is the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University in Houston, Texas. His work includes the study of comparative erotics and ethics in mystical literature, American countercultural translations of Asian religions, and the history of Western esotericism from gnosticism to New Age religions.

#18030

Farhad Ardalan

#18041

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Farhad Ardalan is an Iranian High Energy physicist. He is a professor at Sharif University and the Institute for Studies in Theoretical Physics and Mathematics. He is known for the proposal of the para-string theory, construction of modular invariant partition functionss for WZNW models via the orbifold method, classification of 11-dimensional supergravity solutions with a quotient structure, and discovery of non-commutativity in D-branes of string theory.

#18031

Yuri Semenov

#18042

Overall Influence

1929 - 2023 (94 years)

Yuriy Ivanovich Semenov was a Soviet and Russian historian, philosopher, ethnologist, anthropologist, expert on the history of philosophy, history of primitive society, and the theory of knowledge. He was also the original creator of the globally-formation concept of world history and is a Doctor of Philosophy, Doctor of Historical Sciences , and Professor. He was Distinguished Professor at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.

#18032

Douglas W. Jones

Douglas W. Jones

#18043

Overall Influence

Douglas W. Jones is an American computer scientist at the University of Iowa. His research focuses primarily on computer security, particularly electronic voting. Jones received a B.S. in physics from Carnegie Mellon University in 1973, and a M.S. and Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1976 and 1980 respectively.

#18033

Jon D. Levenson

#18044

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Jon Douglas Levenson is an American Hebrew Bible scholar who is the Albert A. List Professor of Jewish Studies at the Harvard Divinity School. Education A.B. summa cum laude in English, Harvard College, 1971.A.M. Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University, 1974.Ph.D. Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University, 1975.

#18034

Jerome Bettis

#18045

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Jerome Abram Bettis Sr. is an American former football running back who played in the National Football League for 13 seasons, primarily with the Pittsburgh Steelers. Nicknamed "the Bus" due to his large size and running style, he played college football at the University of Notre Dame and was selected 10th overall by the Los Angeles Rams in the 1993 NFL Draft. Bettis was a member of the Rams for three seasons before being traded to the Steelers, where he spent the remainder of his career. A six-time Pro Bowl and two-time first-team All-Pro selection, he is regarded as one of the greatest power runners of all time and ranks eighth in NFL rushing yards.

#18035

Alan Schatzberg

#18046

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Alan F. Schatzberg is an American psychiatrist. He was the 136th president of the American Psychiatric Association . Since 1991, he has been the Kenneth T. Norris Jr . Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine, and he was chair of the department from 1991 to 2010. He has received multiple national and international awards for his work as an investigator in the biology and treatment of depression. He is also the co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Psychiatric Research, along with Florian Holsboer. He received an honorary doctorate from the Medic...

#18036

Alan J. Goldman

#18047

Overall Influence

1932 - 2010 (78 years)

Alan J. Goldman was an American expert in operations research. Career Goldman was born in 1932 and grew up in Brooklyn, where his parents both worked for the public school system. In 1949, he was a winner of the Westinghouse Science Talent Search. He studied mathematics and physics at Brooklyn College, graduating in 1952. He went on to graduate study in mathematics at Princeton University, completing his doctorate in topology in 1957 under the supervision of Ralph Fox. Goldman worked at the National Bureau of Standards from 1956 until 1979, when he became a professor of mathematical sciences at Johns Hopkins University.

#18037

Wei Dongyi

#18048

Overall Influence

1991 - Present (35 years)

Wei Dongyi is a Chinese mathematician, born in Jinan, Shandong province. Currently, he is an assistant professor and assistant researcher at School of Mathematical Science, Peking University. Wei Dongyi graduated from Attached Senior School of Shandong Normal University, studied at Peking University since 2010, earned his bachelor's degree in 2014 and Phd in 2018 under Tian Gang as his doctoral advisor. His research field includes partial differential equations and differential geometry. In December 2019, he became assistant professor. His simple living style attracted huge attention from Chinese internet.

#18038

Robert Axtell

#18049

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Robert Axtell is a professor at George Mason University, Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study, where he is departmental chair of the Department of Computational Social Science. He is also a member of the External Faculty of the Santa Fe Institute. Axtell is also the co-Director of the new Computational Public Policy Lab at Mason.

#18039

Gerald Gunther

#18050

Overall Influence

1927 - 2002 (75 years)

Gerald Gunther was a German-born American constitutional law scholar and a Professor of Law at Stanford Law School from 1962 until his death in 2002. Gunther was among the twenty most widely cited legal scholars of the 20th century, And his 1972 Harvard Law Review article, "The Supreme Court, 1971 Term Foreword: In Search of Evolving Doctrine on a Changing Court: A Model for a Newer Equal Protection," is the fourth most-cited law review article of all time. Gunther's path-breaking casebook, Constitutional Law, originally published in 1965 and now in its 17th edition , is the most widely used ...

#18040

Erich Jarvis

#18051

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Erich Jarvis is an American professor at Rockefeller University. He is the head of a team of researchers who study the neurobiology of vocal learning, a critical behavioral substrate for spoken language. Jarvis uses animal studies including songbirds, parrots, and hummingbirds. His research reasons that bird groups have similar learning abilities to humans in the context of sound. For example, learning new sounds and then passing on vocal repertoires from one generation to the next. Jarvis focuses on the molecular pathways involved in the perception and production of learned vocalizations, and...

#18041

Arturo Valenzuela

Arturo Valenzuela

#18052

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Arturo A. Valenzuela is a Chilean-American academic who was the United States Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs from November 5, 2009, until August 2011. His confirmation had been blocked by Senator Jim DeMint due to a dispute over President Barack Obama's approach to the 2009 Honduran constitutional crisis. He previously served as Professor of Government and Director of the Center for Latin American Studies in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He was previously Professor of Political Science and Director of the Council on Latin American Studies at Duke University.

#18042

C. Mohan

#18053

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Chandrasekaran Mohan is an Indian-born American computer scientist. He was born on 3 August 1955 in Tamil Nadu, India. After growing up there and finishing his undergraduate studies in Chennai, he moved to the United States in 1977 for graduate studies, naturalizing in 2007. In June 2020, he retired from being an IBM Fellow at the IBM Almaden Research Center after working at IBM Research for 38.5 years. Currently, he is a visiting professor at China's Tsinghua University. He is also an Honorary Advisor at the Tamil Nadu e-Governance Agency in Chennai and an advisor at the Kerala Blockchain A...

#18043

Malik Peiris

#18054

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Joseph Sriyal Malik Peiris is a Hong Kong-based British and Sri Lankann virologist, most notable for being the first person to isolate the SARS virus.He is the current Tam Wah-Ching Professor in Medical Science, and Chair Professor of Virology at the Division of Public Health Laboratory Sciences, School of Public Health, University of Hong Kong. He was a member of the Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization of the World Health Organization from 2009 to 2010.

#18044

Ciara

#18055

Overall Influence

1985 - Present (41 years)

Ciara Princess Wilson is an American singer, songwriter, businesswoman, dancer, model, and actress. She rose to prominence with her debut studio album Goodies . The album spawned the single of the same name which topped the Billboard Hot 100 and the UK Singles Chart. Further singles from the album included "1, 2 Step" and "Oh" , both of which peaked at number 2 in the United States. The album was certified triple platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America and garnered two nominations at the 48th Annual Grammy Awards. Ciara was also featured on Missy Elliott's "Lose Control" a...

#18045

Eric Rubin

#18056

Overall Influence

Eric J. Rubin is an American microbiologist, infectious disease specialist, and is currently the editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine. He is also an adjunct professor of immunology and infectious diseases and was formerly the Irene Heinz Given Professor and chair of the department of immunology and infectious diseases at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. His research laboratory works on Mycobacterium tuberculosis, nontuberculous mycobacteria , and the development and application of bacterial genetics tools to study the fundamental biology of these pathogenic organisms.

#18046

Phil Karn

#18057

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Phil Karn is a retired American engineer from Lutherville, Maryland. He earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Cornell University in 1978 and a master's degree in electrical engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 1979. From 1979 until 1984, Karn worked at Bell Labs in Naperville, Illinois, and Murray Hill, New Jersey. From 1984 until 1991, he was with Bell Communications Research in Morristown, New Jersey. From 1991 through to his retirement, he worked at Qualcomm in San Diego, where he specialized in wireless data networking protocols, security, and cryptography.

#18047

Ruth Patrick

#18058

Overall Influence

1907 - 2013 (106 years)

Ruth Myrtle Patrick was an American botanist and limnologist specializing in diatoms and freshwater ecology. She authored more than 200 scientific papers, developed ways to measure the health of freshwater ecosystems and established numerous research facilities.

#18048

Peter Gluckman

#18059

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Sir Peter David Gluckman is a New Zealand scientist. Originally trained as a paediatrician, he served as the inaugural Chief Science Advisor to the New Zealand Prime Minister from 2009 to 2018. He is a founding member and was inaugural chair of the International Network for Government Science Advice, and is president of the International Science Council.

#18049

Yi So-yeon

#18060

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (48 years)

Yi So-yeon is a South Korean astronaut and biotechnologist who became the first Koreann to fly in space. Lee was born and raised in Gwangju, South Korea and graduated from KAIST with a Master's degree in Mechanical Engineering. In 2006, she was selected as one of two finalists in the Korean Astronaut Program: a mission to send the first Koreans to space. A year later, it was announced that she was to be the backup. However, on March 10, 2008, it was announced that she would be the primary. On April 8, 2008, she was launched into space alongside two Russian cosmonauts. She spent around eleven ...

#18050

Clancy Martin

#18061

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Clancy Martin is a Canadian philosopher, novelist, and essayist. His interests focus on 19th century philosophy, existentialism, moral psychology, philosophy and literature, ethics & behavioral health, applied and professional ethics and philosophy of mind.

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