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

#18601

Deng Julong

#18612

Overall Influence

1933 - 2013 (80 years)

Deng Julong was a professor of Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China. He is acknowledged as the founder of grey system theory, first proposed in 1982 with the publication of his paper “Control problems of grey systems,” in the international journal Systems and Control Letter, edited at the time by Roger W. Brockett, a professor at Harvard University. This theory underlies the theory of grey relational analysis. His theory inspired many noted scholars like Jeffrey Yi-Lin Forrest, Liu Sifeng, and Keith W. Hipel, recipient of Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Prize.

#18602

Emil Fackenheim

#18613

Overall Influence

1916 - 2003 (87 years)

Emil Ludwig Fackenheim was a Jewish philosopher and Reform rabbi. Born in Halle, Germany, he was arrested by Nazis on the night of 9 November 1938, known as . Briefly interned at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp , he escaped with his younger brother Wolfgang to Great Britain, where his parents later joined him. Emil's older brother Ernst-Alexander, who refused to leave Germany, was killed in the Holocaust.

#18603

Aaron Bobick

#18614

Overall Influence

Aaron F Bobick is dean of the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis. Bobick’s research is in the field of artificial intelligence and computer vision. He has chaired and published papers in top-tier academic conferences in these areas. His research and expert opinions on technology have also been reported in major news sources.

#18604

Eric Hessels

#18615

Overall Influence

Eric A. Hessels is a Canadian physicist, currently a Canada Research Chair and Distinguished Research Professor at York University in Toronto, Ontario. In September 2019, Hessels et al. measured the Lamb shift for hydrogen to measure the radius of a proton and demonstrated that it is consistent with the value obtained for muonic hydrogen. This proved that the supposed discrepancy known as the proton radius puzzle did not exist.

#18605

Julian Thompson

#18616

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (92 years)

Major General Julian Howard Atherden Thompson, is a military historian and former Royal Marines officer who commanded 3 Commando Brigade during the Falklands War. Early life Thompson was born on 7 October 1934 to Major A. J. Thompson and Mary Stearns Thompson . He was educated at Sherborne School, an all-boys public school in Dorset.

#18606

Louise Lamphere

Louise Lamphere

#18617

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Areas of Specialization: Feminist Anthropology, Urban Anthropology Louise Lamphere is a feminist anthropologist and Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico. She earned her Ph.D. from Harvard University. Her research interests have included feminist anthropology, gender, de-industrialization, and urban anthropology. She has published extensively on Native American issues, such as kinship and cooperation, and on issues such as working mothers, immigration and women’s lives and remains active in her advocacy on behalf of feminist causes. Lamphere started as an ass...

#18607

Charles Snead Houston

Charles Snead Houston

#18618

Overall Influence

1913 - 2009 (96 years)

Charles Snead Houston was an American physician, mountaineer, high-altitude investigator, inventor, author, film-maker, and former Peace Corps administrator. He made two important and celebrated attempts to climb the mountain K2 in the Karakoram Range.

#18608

William D. Mounce

#18619

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

William D. Mounce is an American scholar of New Testament Greek. He has also worked as an author, teacher and preacher. Education Ph.D. 1981, in New Testament. Aberdeen University, Aberdeen, Scotland.M.A. 1977, in Biblical Studies. Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California.B.A. 1975, in Biblical Studies, minor in Greek. Bethel College, St. Paul, Minnesota; Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, Kentucky, 1971-74.

#18609

Fumio Kishida

#18620

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Fumio Kishida is a Japanese politician who has served as Prime Minister of Japan and President of the Liberal Democratic Party since 2021. A member of the House of Representatives, he previously served as Minister for Foreign Affairs from 2012 to 2017 and as acting Minister of Defense in 2017. From 2017 to 2020, he also chaired the LDP Policy Research Council.

#18610

Michaël Llodra

#18621

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (46 years)

Michaël Llodra is a French former professional tennis player. He was a successful doubles player with three Grand Slam championships and an Olympic silver medal, and has also had success in singles, winning five career titles and gaining victories over Novak Djokovic, Juan Martín del Potro, Tomáš Berdych, Robin Söderling, Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Nikolay Davydenko, Janko Tipsarević and John Isner. Llodra has been called "the best volleyer on tour."

#18611

Rebecca Tushnet

#18622

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Rebecca Tushnet is an American legal scholar. She serves as the Frank Stanton Professor of First Amendment Law at Harvard Law School. Her scholarship focuses on copyright, trademark, First Amendment, and false advertising.

#18612

Ashutosh Tewari

Ashutosh Tewari

#18623

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Ashutosh K. Tewari is the chairman of urology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. He is a board certified American urologist, oncologist, and principal investigator. Before moving to the Icahn School of Medicine in 2013, he was the founding director of both the Center for Prostate Cancer at Weill Cornell Medical College and the LeFrak Center for Robotic Surgery at NewYork–Presbyterian Hospital. Dr. Tewari was the Ronald P. Lynch endowed Chair of Urologic Oncology and the hospital's Director of Robotic Prostatectomy, treating patients with prostate, urinary bladder and other urological cancers.

#18613

Marcello Mastroianni

Marcello Mastroianni

#18624

Overall Influence

1924 - 1996 (72 years)

Marcello Vincenzo Domenico Mastroianni was an Italian film actor, regarded as one of his country's most iconic male performers of the 20th century. He played leading roles for many of Italy's top directors in a career spanning 147 films between 1939 and 1997, and garnered many international honours including 2 BAFTA Awards, 2 Best Actor awards at the Venice and Cannes film festivals, 2 Golden Globes, and 3 Academy Award nominations.

#18614

Andrea Petkovic

Andrea Petkovic

#18625

Overall Influence

1987 - Present (39 years)

Andrea Petkovic is a German former professional tennis player. Born in Tuzla, SFR Yugoslavia, to Serbian father Zoran and Bosniak mother Amira, she moved to Germany at six months old and turned professional in 2006 at the age of 18. A former top-10 player, Petkovic reached a career-high singles ranking of world No. 9 on 10 October 2011, becoming the first German female player ranked inside the top 10 since Steffi Graf in 1999. That year, she played in the quarterfinals of three Grand Slam tournaments as well as a Premier Mandatory final at the China Open, and qualified as an alternate to the...

#18615

Robert J. Young

#18626

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Robert J. Young is a Canadian historian and former professor of history at the University of Winnipeg . He specializes in 20th century European international politics. A graduate of the University of Saskatchewan and the London School of Economics, Young's doctoral dissertation was written under the supervision of Donald Cameron Watt. It was published by Harvard University Press as In Command of France: French Foreign Policy and Military Planning, 1933-1940. Over the last forty years, Professor Young, a Canadian, has written numerous academic books and articles including France and the Origins of the Second World War and Louis Barthou: Power and Pleasure.

#18616

Andrzej Udalski

#18627

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Andrzej Jarosław Udalski is a Polish astronomer and astrophysicist, and director of the Astronomical Observatory of the University of Warsaw. He is also head of the Department of Observational Astrophysics at Astronomical Observatory, the head and project manager of the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment, and editor of the quarterly journal Acta Astronomica.

#18617

Remy Chauvin

#18628

Overall Influence

1913 - 2009 (96 years)

Remy Chauvin at Sainte-Croix-aux-Mines, Haut-Rhin, was a biologist and entomologist, and a French Honorary Professor Emeritus at the Sorbonne, PhD, and a senior research fellow since 1946. Chauvin was also known for defending the rights of animals and for being interested in such topics as parapsychology, life after death, psychics, clairvoyance and UFOs. He sometimes wrote under the pseudonym Pierre Duval.

#18618

H. James Birx

#18629

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Harry James Birx , is an American anthropologist and a professor of Anthropology at Canisius College in Buffalo, New York. He is a distinguished research scholar at the State University of New York at Geneseo.

#18619

Mark Johnson

#18630

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Mark Johnson is an American film and television producer. He won the Academy Award for Best Picture for producing the 1988 film Rain Man. Early life Johnson was born in Washington, D.C., the son of Dorothy , a realtor, and Emery Johnson, who worked in the air cargo business. He graduated from the University of Virginia in 1971.

#18620

Werner Weidenfeld

Werner Weidenfeld

#18631

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Werner Weidenfeld is a German political scientist. He was a political advisor for Germany–United States relations under different chancellors. He currently serves as rector of the Alma Mater Europaea.

#18621

Sean Payton

#18632

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Patrick Sean Payton is an American football coach who is the head coach for the Denver Broncos of the National Football League and a former quarterback. Previously, he served as the head coach of the New Orleans Saints from 2006 to 2021, leading the franchise to its first Super Bowl victory during the 2009 season. Payton played college football for the Eastern Illinois Panthers and played professionally in 1987 with the Chicago Bears and 1988 overseas in Britain for the Leicester Panthers.

#18622

Jo Handelsman

#18633

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Areas of Specialization: Microbiology, Bacteriology, Plant Pathology Jo Handelsman was born in New York City. She is Professor of Plant Pathology, Vilas Research Professor, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor, and Director of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery, all at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Handelsman obtained her bachelor’s degree in agronomy from Cornell University in 1979, and her PhD in molecular biology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1984. In 2010, Handelsman joined the Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology at Yale University, where her research focused on the microorganisms present in soil and insect gut.

#18623

Rafi Ahmed

#18634

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Rafi Ahmed is an Indian-American virologist and immunologist. He is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at Emory University, where he is also the director of the Emory Vaccine Center and a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Vaccine Research. In 2009, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

#18624

John Vikström

#18635

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (95 years)

John Edvin Vikström is a Finnish priest. He served as the Archbishop of Turku and Finland from 1982 to 1998. Personal life John was born to parents Edvin and Hilma Vikström. In 1957 he married teacher Birgitta Vikström who died in 1994. John Vikström has three children. His brother Erik Vikström and his son Björn Vikström are both his successors as bishop of Porvoo/Borgå.

#18625

Paul L. Maier

#18636

Overall Influence

1930 - Present (96 years)

Paul L. Maier is an American historian and novelist. He has written several works of scholarly and popular non-fiction about Christianity and novels about Christian historians. He is the former Russell H. Seibert Professor of Ancient History at Western Michigan University, from which he retired in 2011, retaining the title of professor emeritus in the Department of History. He previously served as Third Vice President of the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod.

#18626

Robert Wyatt

#18637

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Robert Wyatt is a retired English musician. A founding member of the influential Canterbury scene bands Soft Machine and Matching Mole, he was initially a kit drummer and singer before becoming paraplegic following an accidental fall from a window in 1973, which led him to abandon band work, explore other instruments, and begin a forty-year solo career.

#18627

Hal David

#18638

Overall Influence

1921 - 2012 (91 years)

Harold Lane David was an American lyricist. He grew up in New York City. He was best known for his collaborations with composer Burt Bacharach and his association with Dionne Warwick. Early life David was born in New York City, a son of Austrian Jewish immigrants Lina and Gedalier David, who owned a delicatessen in New York. He is the younger brother of American lyricist and songwriter Mack David. David attended Thomas Jefferson High School in Brooklyn and studied Journalism at New York University.

#18628

El Anatsui

#18639

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

El Anatsui is a Ghanaian sculptor active for much of his career in Nigeria. He has drawn particular international attention for his "bottle-top installations". These installations consist of thousands of aluminum pieces sourced from alcohol recycling stations and sewn together with copper wire, which are then transformed into metallic cloth-like wall sculptures. Such materials, while seemingly stiff and sturdy, are actually free and flexible, which often helps with manipulation when installing his sculptures. Anatsui was included in the 2023 Time 100 list of the world's most influential peopl...

#18629

David McKee

#18640

Overall Influence

1935 - 2022 (87 years)

David John McKee was a British writer and illustrator, chiefly of children's books and animations. For his contribution as a children's illustrator, he was UK nominee for the biennial international Hans Christian Andersen Award in 2006.

#18630

Joseph Fins

#18641

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Joseph J. Fins, M.D., D. Hum. Litt., M.A.C.P., F.R.C.P. is an American physician and medical ethicist. He is chief of the Division of Medical Ethics at New York Presbyterian Hospital and Weill Cornell Medical College, where he serves as The E. William Davis Jr., M.D. Professor of Medical Ethics, and Professor of Medicine, Professor of Public Health, and Professor of Medicine in Psychiatry. Fins is also Director of Medical Ethics and an attending physician at New York Presbyterian Hospital-Weill Cornell Medical Center. Fins is also a member of the adjunct faculty of Rockefeller University and has served as Associate for Medicine at The Hastings Center.

#18632

Mark Crispin

#18643

Overall Influence

1956 - 2012 (56 years)

Mark Reed Crispin is best known as the father of the Internet Message Access Protocol , having invented it in 1985 during his time at the Stanford Knowledge Systems Laboratory. He is the author or co-author of numerous RFCss and was the principal author of UW IMAP, one of the reference implementations of the IMAP4rev1 protocol described in RFC 3501. He also designed the MIX mail storage format.

#18633

Mark Mostert

#18644

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Mark P. Mostert is co-director of the Institute for Disability and Bioethics and professor of Special Education at Regent University, Virginia Beach. He has written about and lectured on Eugenics and Euthanasia, Nazi Germany's state-sanctioned "useless eater" policy to exterminate people with disabilities and others considered less than human, and the fads and pseudoscientific practices found in special education.

#18634

Julia Keller

#18645

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Julia Keller is an American writer and former journalist. Her awards include the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing. Life Keller was born in Huntington, West Virginia and lived there throughout her early life. Her father was a mathematics professor who taught at Marshall University. She graduated from Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, and earned a doctoral degree in English literature from Ohio State University. Her master's thesis was an analysis of the Henry Roth novel, Call It Sleep. Her doctoral dissertation explored multiple biographies of Virginia Woolf . She currently l...

#18635

William F. Schreiber

#18646

Overall Influence

1925 - 2009 (84 years)

William F. Schreiber was an American electrical engineer and professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . Schreiber had served on the advisory committee of the Federal Communications Commission. In March 1969, he founded the imaging systems supplier ECRM , which designed a computer-based color printing system and an optical character recognition machine.

#18636

John Strugnell

#18647

Overall Influence

1930 - 2007 (77 years)

John Strugnell was an English Professor Emeritus at the Harvard Divinity School and a former editor-in-chief of the Dead Sea Scrolls project. Strugnell became, at 23, the youngest member of the team of scholars led by Roland de Vaux, formed in 1954 to edit the Dead Sea Scrolls in Jerusalem. He was studying Oriental languages at Jesus College, Oxford when Sir Godfrey Rolles Driver, a lecturer in Semitic philology, nominated him to join the Scrolls editorial team.

#18637

Frank Morgan

#18648

Overall Influence

Frank Morgan is an American mathematician and the Webster Atwell '21 Professor of Mathematics, Emeritus, at Williams College. He is known for contributions to geometric measure theory, minimal surfaces, and differential geometry, including the resolution of the double bubble conjecture. He was vice-president of the American Mathematical Society and the Mathematical Association of America.

#18638

Assaf Naor

#18649

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Assaf Naor is an Israeli American and Czech mathematician, computer scientist, and a professor of mathematics at Princeton University. Academic career Naor earned a baccalaureate from Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1996 and a doctorate from the same university in 2002, under the supervision of Joram Lindenstrauss. He worked at Microsoft Research from 2002 until 2007, with an affiliated faculty position at the University of Washington, and joined the NYU faculty in 2006.

#18639

Håkan Håkansson

#18650

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Håkan Håkansson is a Swedish organizational theorist, and Professor of International Management at the BI Norwegian Business School, known for his work on business networks. Biography Håkansson attended the Technical High School in Örebro, where he graduated as engineer in 1967. He obtained his BS in Business Administration in 1970 at the Uppsala University, where in 1975 he also obtained his PhD in Business Administration with the thesis, entitled "Studies in Industrial Purchasing with special reference to Determinants of Communication Patterns."

#18640

Raymond Pierrehumbert

Raymond Pierrehumbert

#18651

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Raymond Thomas Pierrehumbert is the Halley Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford. Previously, he was Louis Block Professor in Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago. He was a lead author on the Third Assessment Report of the IPCC and a co-author of the National Research Council report on abrupt climate change.

#18641

Hakan Topal

#18652

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Hakan Topal is an artist living and working in Brooklyn, New York. He was the co-founder with Guven Incirlioglu of xurban collective , and is known for his research-based conceptual art practice. He is an Associate Professor of New Media and Art+Design at Purchase College, SUNY.

#18642

Sandra Pianalto

#18653

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Sandra Pianalto is an economist. She previously served as the tenth chief executive of the Fourth District Federal Reserve Bank, at Cleveland from 2003 to 2014. Early life and education Pianalto was born in Valli del Pasubio, Italy. She earned a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Akron and a master's degree in economics from The George Washington University. She is a graduate of the Advanced Management Program at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business and holds honorary doctor of humane letters degrees from the University of Akron, Baldwin-Wallace College, Kent State University, and Ursuline College.

#18643

Ed Asner

#18654

Overall Influence

1929 - 2021 (92 years)

Eddie Asner , professionally known as Ed Asner, was an American actor and former president of the Screen Actors Guild. He is best remembered for portraying Lou Grant during the 1970s and early 1980s, on both The Mary Tyler Moore Show and its spin-off series Lou Grant, making him one of the few television actors to portray the same character in both a comedy and a drama.

#18644

Robert Fischell

#18655

Overall Influence

1930 - Present (96 years)

Robert Fischell is a physicist, prolific inventor, and holder of more than 200 U.S. and foreign medical patents. His inventions have led to the creation of several biotechnology companies. He worked at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory full-time for 25 years and part-time for an additional 13 years. He contributed to APL's satellite navigation work; he later developed a rechargeable implantable pacemaker that could be programmed with radiowaves, . He and his team at Hopkins also helped miniaturize the implantable cardiac defibrillator. Mr. Fischell went on to invent the ...

#18645

David Preiss

#18656

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

David Preiss FRS is a Czech and British mathematician, specializing in mathematical analysis. He is a professor of mathematics at the University of Warwick Preiss is a recipient of the Ostrowski Prize and the winner of the 2008 London Mathematical Society Pólya Prize for his 1987 result on Geometry of Measures, where he solved the remaining problem in the geometric theoretic structure of sets and measures in Euclidean space. He was an invited speaker at the ICM 1990 in Kyoto. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Foreign Fellow of the Learned Society of the Czech Republic .

#18646

Natsue Washizu

#18657

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Natsue Washizu , professionally also known as Kurumi Kobato , is a Japanese academic, translator, children's singer, actress, television personality and voice actress. Having debuted as a child singer and actress at the age of four in 1952, she subsequently signed with Victor Entertainment and acted in Japan's first television drama Ponpoko Monogatari. From 1964 to 1972, she was the Onē-san on Captain Doremifa and its successor Nakayoshi Rhythm. As a voice actress she is known for portraying Kozue Ayuhara in the anime Attack No. 1 as well as Snow White in the Japanese dub of Snow White and the...

#18647

Elaine Murphy, Baroness Murphy

#18658

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Elaine Murphy, Baroness Murphy is a British independent politician and a member of the House of Lords. Biography After qualifying as a doctor and then as a psychiatrist she later became an academic in the National Health Service for 25 years. She spent a period as a Health Service general manager between 1984 and 1990 which included the post of District General Manager for Lewisham and North Southwark Health Authority. She was the first professor of psychiatry of old age in the UK, held at the University of London at Guy's Hospital. She took on non-executive roles after retirement and was Chair of North East London Strategic Health Authority until 30 June 2006.

#18648

Xiaodong Wang

#18659

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Xiaodong Wang is a Chinese-American biochemist best known for his work with apoptosis, one of the ways through which cells kill themselves. Early life and education Wang was born in Wuhan, China in 1963, and was raised in Xinxiang, Henan by his grandparents. His family was relatively well-educated. His grandfather was a high school English teacher, his grandmother a primary school teacher, and his great uncle a biology professor. His primary and secondary coincided with the Cultural Revolution, and he only started high school in 1978 at a top high school in Henan.

#18649

Czesław Łuczak

#18660

Overall Influence

1922 - 2002 (80 years)

Czesław Łuczak was a Polish historian focusing on World War II. He served as Rector of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań from 1965 to 1972; and, from 1969 to 1981 and from 1987 to 1991, as Director of the University's Institute of History. He was a member of the Polish United Workers' Party in communist Poland.

#18650

Charles Boberg

#18661

Overall Influence

Charles Boberg is an academic specializing in sociolinguistics, particularly North American English. He is an associate professor of linguistics at McGill University in Montreal. He studied at the University of Pennsylvania under William Labov, and later collaborated with him and Sharon Ash in the preparation of The Atlas of North American English, published by De Gruyter in 2006. Boberg has been consulted on matters of national security because of his expertise in identifying regional dialects and vocabulary patterns of North American English.

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