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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Ranking

List of the most influential people

#19401

Hans Meuer

#19412

Overall Influence

1936 - 2014 (78 years)

Hans Meuer was a professor of computer science at the University of Mannheim, managing director of Prometeus GmbH and general chair of the International Supercomputing Conference. In 1986, he became co-founder and organizer of the first Mannheim Supercomputer Conference, which has been held annually but known as the International Supercomputing Conference since 2001.

#19402

Peter Nemenyi

#19413

Overall Influence

1927 - 2002 (75 years)

Peter Björn Nemenyi was an American mathematician, who worked in statistics and probability theory. He taught mathematics at a number of American colleges and universities, including Hunter College, Tougaloo College, Oberlin College, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Virginia State College and the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Several statistical tests, for example the Nemenyi test, bear his name. He was also a prominent civil-rights activist. He was the son of Paul Nemenyi an eminent fluid and engineering mechanics expert of the twentieth century. His mother was Aranka Heller,...

#19403

Marie-Hélène Schwartz

#19414

Overall Influence

1913 - 2013 (100 years)

Marie-Hélène Schwartz was a French mathematician, known for her work on characteristic numbers of spaces with singularities. Education and career Born Marie-Hélène Lévy, she was the daughter of mathematician Paul Lévy and the great-granddaughter of philologist Henri Weil. After studying at the Lycée Janson-de-Sailly, she began studies at the École Normale Supérieure in 1934, but contracted tuberculosis which forced her to drop out. She married another Jewish mathematician, Laurent Schwartz, in 1938, and soon went into hiding while the Nazis occupied France. After the war, she taught at the Un...

#19404

Hans Schlegel

#19415

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Hans Wilhelm Schlegel is a German physicist, a former ESA astronaut, and a veteran of two NASA Space Shuttle missions. Early life and education Schlegel, born and raised in Germany, graduated as an international exchange student from Lewis Central High School in Council Bluffs, Iowa and Hansa Gymnasium in Cologne before studying physics at RWTH Aachen University in his home country. After having received his university degree, he conducted research in semiconductor physics before being trained as an astronaut in the late 1980s by the German Aerospace Center . He flew as a DLR payload speciali...

#19405

Charles L. Brooks III

#19416

Overall Influence

Charles L. Brooks III is an American theoretical and computational biophysicist. He is the Cyrus Levinthal Distinguished University Professor of Chemistry and Biophysics, the Warner-Lambert/Park-Davis Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Biophysics and Chair of Biophysics at the University of Michigan.

#19406

Randy Woodson

#19417

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

William Randolph Woodson is an American plant physiologist and university administrator. He is the fourteenth and current chancellor of North Carolina State University. Personal life and education Woodson was raised in Fordyce, Arkansas. He is married to Susan Wynne Woodson, and they have three adult children.

#19407

Mark Lewis

#19418

Overall Influence

Mark Lewis is an American hard rock/heavy metal music producer. Originally from the Southern Maryland area, he once lived in the Orlando, Florida area. Now Mark works as a producer, engineer, and mixer at his own studio in Nashville, Tennessee.

#19408

Andreas Blass

#19419

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Andreas Raphael Blass is a mathematician, currently a professor at the University of Michigan. He works in mathematical logic, particularly set theory, and theoretical computer science. Blass graduated from the University of Detroit, where he was a Putnam Fellow in 1965, in 1966 with a B.S. in physics. He received his Ph.D. in 1970 from Harvard University, with a thesis on Orderings of Ultrafilters written under the supervision of Frank Wattenberg. Since 1970 he has been employed by the University of Michigan, first as a T.H. Hildebrandt Research Instructor , then assistant professor , assoc...

#19409

R. Kent Greenawalt

#19420

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (90 years)

R. Kent Greenawalt was a legal scholar who was University Professor at Columbia Law School. His primary interests involved constitutional law, especially First Amendment jurisprudence, and legal philosophy.

#19410

Lara Denis

#19421

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Lara Denis is an American philosopher and Professor of Philosophy and Director of Ethics Program at Agnes Scott College. She is known for her works on Kantian ethics. Denis is a former President of Phi Beta Kappa .

#19411

David James

#19422

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

David Benjamin James MBE is an English former professional footballer who played as a goalkeeper. His most recent position was manager at Kerala Blasters FC in the Indian Super League in 2018. He is also a pundit on Sky Sports football coverage.

#19412

Michael Lynk

#19423

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Stanley Michael Lynk is a Canadian legal academic. He is currently an associate professor at the University of Western Ontario. From 2016 to 2022 he was the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territories occupied since 1967.

#19413

Tamar Ross

#19424

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Tamar Ross is a professor of Jewish philosophy at Bar-Ilan University and a specialist of religious feminist philosophy. Work Ross makes a vital contribution to philosophical questions around gender in Judaism by arguing that feminism is not external to Torah but rather integral to it. She argues for the concept of evolving revelation, that is, that people learn more as history evolves and societies develop and mature, and argues against the concept of Yeridat ha-dorot, the idea that knowledge of Torah diminishes with time. She also argues against approaches of more liberal movements which a...

#19414

Carl Levin

#19425

Overall Influence

1934 - 2021 (87 years)

Carl Milton Levin was an American attorney and politician who served as a United States senator from Michigan from 1979 to 2015. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee from 2001 to 2003 and again from 2007 to 2015.

#19415

Dana Gould

#19426

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Dana Gould is an American stand-up comic, actor, writer and voice artist who has been featured on HBO, Showtime, and Comedy Central. He voiced Hi Larious in the TV series Father of the Pride and the titular character in the Gex franchise.

#19416

Yoram Ben-Porat

#19427

Overall Influence

1937 - 1992 (55 years)

Yoram Ben-Porat was an Israeli academic and economist. He served as president of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem from 1990 until his death in 1992 in an automobile accident at the age of 55. Biography Ben-Porat was born in Ramat Gan, Israel.

#19417

Bob Griese

#19428

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Rob Allen Griese is an American former professional football player who was a quarterback for the Miami Dolphins of the American Football League and National Football League . He earned All-American honors playing college football with the Purdue Boilermakers before being drafted in 1967 by the Dolphins of the AFL. Widely regarded as one of the greatest quarterbacks of the 1970s, Griese led the Dolphins to a then record three consecutive Super Bowl appearances, including two Super Bowl victories in VII and VIII, the first of which capped off Miami's undefeated and untied 1972 season, the only such season in NFL history.

#19418

James Blunt

#19429

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

James Blunt is an English singer, songwriter, and musician. A former reconnaissance officer in the Life Guards regiment of the British Army, he served under NATO during the 1999 Kosovo War. After he left the military, he rose to fame in 2004 with the release of his debut album Back to Bedlam, achieving worldwide fame with the singles "You're Beautiful" and "Goodbye My Lover". Blunt's first album has sold over 12 million copies worldwide, topping the UK Albums Chart and peaking at number two in the US. "You're Beautiful" reached number one in thirteen countries, including the UK and the US. Ba...

#19419

François Bayrou

#19430

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

François René Jean Lucien Bayrou is a French politician who has presided over the Democratic Movement since he founded it in 2007. A centrist, he was a candidate in the 2002, 2007 and 2012 presidential elections. He has also presided over the European Democratic Party since 2004.

#19420

Birger A. Pearson

#19431

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (92 years)

Birger A. Pearson is an American scholar and professor studying early Christianity and Gnosticism. He currently holds the positions of Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara and Professor and Interim Director of the Religious Studies Program at the University of California, Berkeley.

#19421

John D. Kraus

#19432

Overall Influence

1910 - 2004 (94 years)

John Daniel Kraus was an American physicist known for his contributions to electromagnetics, radio astronomy, and antenna theory. His inventions included the helical antenna, the corner reflector antenna, and several other types of antennas. He designed the Big Ear radio telescope at Ohio State University, which was constructed mostly by a team of OSU students and was used to carry out the Ohio Sky Survey. Kraus held a number of patents and published widely.

#19422

Patrick Mahomes

Patrick Mahomes

#19433

Overall Influence

1995 - Present (31 years)

Patrick Lavon Mahomes II is an American football quarterback for the Kansas City Chiefs of the National Football League . The son of former Major League Baseball pitcher Pat Mahomes, he played college football and baseball at Texas Tech. Following his sophomore year, he quit baseball to focus solely on football. In his junior year, he led all NCAA Division I FBS players in multiple categories including passing yards and total touchdowns . He was selected 10th overall by the Kansas City Chiefs in the 2017 NFL Draft.

#19423

Merve Emre

#19434

Overall Influence

Merve Emre is a Turkish-American author, academic, and literary critic. She is the author of nonfiction books The Personality Brokers: The Strange History of Myers-Briggs and the Birth of Personality Testing and Paraliterary: The Making of Bad Readers in Postwar America and has published essays and articles in The Atlantic, Harper's Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, and other publications.

#19424

Shirley Hodgson

#19435

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Shirley Victoria Penrose Hodgson, FRCP, FRSB is a British geneticist. Biography Hodgson studied at Somerville College, Oxford. She worked as a GP, then performed as a locum in clinical genetics at Guy's Hospital, saying she found the subject "irresistible". She became Senior Registrar in Clinical Genetics for the South Thames Regional Genetics Centre and Honorary Senior Registrar at Hammersmith Hospital, London, from 1983 to 1988; then Consultant Geneticist at Addenbrooke's Hospital from 1988 to 1990. In the 1990s, she led the regional cancer genetics service at Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital...

#19425

James R. Arnold

James R. Arnold

#19436

Overall Influence

1923 - 2012 (89 years)

James Richard Arnold was the Harold C. Urey Professor of Chemistry , and a noted pioneer in the field of planetary and space chemistry at the University of California at San Diego , where an endowed lectureship has been established in his name.

#19426

Montague Ullman

Montague Ullman

#19437

Overall Influence

1916 - 2008 (92 years)

Montague Ullman was a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and parapsychologist who founded the Dream Laboratory at the Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York and for over three decades promoted public interest in dreams and dream sharing groups.

#19427

Helen Epstein

#19438

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Helen Epstein is an American writer of memoir, journalism and biography who lives in Lexington, Massachusetts, United States. Biography Early life and education Helen Epstein is the daughter of Kurt Epstein and Franci Rabinek, both survivors of Nazi concentration camps. She was born in Prague in November 27, 1947, grew up in New York City, and graduated from Hunter College High School, Hebrew University, and the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.

#19428

Edvard Ravnikar

Edvard Ravnikar

#19439

Overall Influence

1907 - 1993 (86 years)

Edvard Ravnikar was a Slovenian architect. Ravnikar was born in Novo Mesto and was a student of architect Jože Plečnik. Later, he led the new generation of Slovene architects, notable for developing the Slovene architecture field's infrastructure, organizing architectural competitions etc. He was a professor at the Ljubljana School of Architecture. He also promoted Scandinavian architectural style in Slovenia, particularly Finnish achievements in architecture accomplished by those such as Alvar Aalto. His most notable creations feature prominently in Ljubljana, among them Republic Square, Cankar Hall, Maximarket department store, and the Museum of Modern Art.

#19429

Julien Benneteau

Julien Benneteau

#19440

Overall Influence

1981 - Present (45 years)

Julien Henry Guy Benneteau-Desgrois is a French retired professional tennis player. His career-high singles ranking is ATP world no. 25, which he reached in November 2014. He formerly resided in Boulogne-Billancourt and now lives in Geneva. Benneteau did not win a singles title, although he finished as runner-up in ten ATP tournaments . He reached the quarterfinals of the 2006 French Open and the semifinals of the 2014 Cincinnati Masters and 2017 Paris Masters . Benneteau also had success in doubles, winning the bronze medal in men's doubles at the 2012 London Olympics and the 2014 French Op...

#19430

Mark LeVine

#19441

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Mark Andrew LeVine is an American historian, musician, writer, and professor. He is a professor of history at the University of California, Irvine. Education LeVine received his B.A. in comparative religion and biblical studies from Hunter College and his M.A. and Ph.D. from New York University's Department of Middle Eastern Studies. He speaks multiple languages including Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish, Persian, Italian, French, German and English.

#19431

Adam Clayton

#19442

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Adam Charles Clayton is an English-born Irish musician who is the bass guitarist of the rock band U2. He has resided in County Dublin, Ireland since his family moved to Malahide in 1965, when he was five years old. Clayton attended Mount Temple Comprehensive School, where he met schoolmates with whom he co-founded U2 in 1976. A member of the band since its inception, he has recorded 15 studio albums with U2.

#19432

Phil Zuckerman

#19443

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Philip Joseph Zuckerman is a sociologist and professor of sociology and secular studies at Pitzer College in Claremont, California. He specializes in the sociology of substantial secularity and is the author of several books, including What It Means to Be Moral: Why Religion Is Not Necessary for Living an Ethical Life .

#19433

Frederick Charles Frank

#19444

Overall Influence

1911 - 1998 (87 years)

Sir Frederick Charles Frank, OBE, FRS was a British theoretical physicist. He is best known for his work on crystal dislocations, including the idea of the Frank–Read source of dislocations. He also proposed the cyclol reaction in the mid-1930s, and made many other contributions to solid-state physics, geophysics, and the theory of liquid crystals.

#19434

Thom Brooks

#19445

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Thomas "Thom" Brooks, is an American-British political philosopher and legal scholar. He has been Professor of Law and Government at Durham University since 2014, and was the Dean of Durham Law School from 2016 to 2021. He was previously a lecturer then Reader at Newcastle University. He has been a visiting scholar at several Ivy League and Russell Group universities. He was the founding editor of the Journal of Moral Philosophy.

#19435

Jennifer Bartlett

Jennifer Bartlett

#19446

Overall Influence

1941 - 2022 (81 years)

Jennifer Bartlett was an American artist and novelist. She was best known for paintings and prints that combine the system-based aesthetic of conceptual art with the painterly approach of Neo-Expressionism. Many of her pieces were executed on small, square, enamel-coated steel plates that are combined in grid formations to create very large works.

#19436

Barry Smith

#19447

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Barry Smith is an academic working in the fields of ontology and biomedical informatics. Smith is the author of more than 700 scientific publications, including 15 authored or edited books, and he is one of the most widely cited living philosophers.

#19437

Oliver Günther

#19448

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Oliver Günther is president of the University of Potsdam and former president of the German Informatics Society . Education In 1979 and 1980, Günther was the winner of Germany's National Mathematics Competition. He holds a Diploma in Industrial Engineering from the University of Karlsruhe, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley.

#19438

Saul Fenster

#19449

Overall Influence

Saul K. Fenster was the sixth president of New Jersey Institute of Technology from 1978 until 2002. Education Fenster got his BS from City College of New York, MS from Columbia University, and PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan.

#19439

Raymond Dwek

#19450

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Raymond Allen Dwek CBE FRS FRSC is a scientist at the University of Oxford and co-founder of the biotechnology company Oxford GlycoSciences Ltd. Biography Dwek was educated at Carmel College, and the University of Manchester, where he studied chemistry . He then went to Oxford University and Lincoln College, Oxford, where he completed his DPhil in physical chemistry in 1966. He became Professor of Glycobiology in 1988 in the Department of Biochemistry. He is an emeritus fellow of Exeter College, Oxford and co-director of the Oxford Glycobiology Institute, which he founded in 1991. From 2000 to 2006, he was also head of the Department of Biochemistry.

#19440

John Thomas Finch

#19451

Overall Influence

1930 - 2017 (87 years)

John Finch FRS was a British X-ray crystallographer and electron microscopist. After working and receiving a PhD at Birkbeck College London, where he was hired by Rosalind Franklin, he worked at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge from 1962 on biological structures and macromolecules, including of nucleosomes and of viruses such as tobacco mosaic virus.

#19441

Richard Fikes

#19452

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Richard Earl Fikes is a computer scientist and Professor Emeritus in the Computer Science department of Stanford University. He is professionally active as a consultant and expert witness. He led Stanford's Knowledge Systems Laboratory from 1991 to 2006, and has held appointments at Berkeley, Carnegie-Mellon, Price Waterhouse Technology Centre, Xerox PARC, and SRI International.

#19442

Jean Meyer

#19453

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Jean Meyer Barth is a French-Mexican historian and author, known for his writings on early 20th-century Mexican history. He has published extensively on the Mexican Revolution and Cristero War, the history of Nayarit, and on the caudillo Manuel Lozada. He is a faculty member at the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, and a Guggenheim Fellow.

#19443

Klaus Rajewsky

#19454

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (90 years)

Klaus Rajewsky is a German immunologist, renowned for his work on B cells. He studied medicine in Frankfurt, Munich and at the Pasteur Institute, Paris. In 1964 he started working at the Institute of Genetics in the University of Cologne, where he became professor for genetics. He researched Hodgkin's disease and the role of B cells within the immune system. He also developed conditional knockout mice based on Cre-Lox recombination.

#19444

Shimshon Amitsur

Shimshon Amitsur

#19455

Overall Influence

1921 - 1994 (73 years)

Shimshon Avraham Amitsur was an Israeli mathematician. He is best known for his work in ring theory, in particular PI rings, an area of abstract algebra. Biography Amitsur was born in Jerusalem and studied at the Hebrew University under the supervision of Jacob Levitzki. His studies were repeatedly interrupted, first by World War II and then by the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. He received his M.Sc. degree in 1946, and his Ph.D. in 1950. Later, for his joint work with Levitzki, he received the first Israel Prize in Exact Sciences. He worked at the Hebrew University until his retirement in 1989. Amitsur was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study from 1952 to 1954.

#19445

Dan Jacobson

#19456

Overall Influence

1929 - 2014 (85 years)

Dan Jacobson was a South African novelist, short story writer, critic and essayist of Lithuanian Jewish descent. Early life and career Dan Jacobson was born 7 March 1929, in Johannesburg, South Africa, where his parents' families had come to avoid the persecution of Jews and to escape poverty in their European homelands. His father, Hyman Michael Jacobson, was born in Ilūkste, Latvia, in 1885. His mother, Liebe Jacobson, was born in Kelme, Lithuania, in 1896. Jacobson had two older brothers, Israel Joshua and Hirsh, and a younger sister, Aviva. His mother's family emigrated to South Africa in 1919, after the death of his grandfather.

#19446

Christos Rozakis

#19457

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Christos Rozakis is a Greek judge, and currently the President of the Administrative Tribunal of the Council of Europe. He was formerly the first vice-president of the European Court of Human Rights. In 1996, he also served briefly as a Deputy Foreign Minister of Greece.

#19447

Ernest R. Davidson

#19458

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (90 years)

Ernest R. Davidson, born October 12, 1936, in Terre Haute, Indiana, is a former professor of chemistry, University of Washington and Indiana University-Bloomington . He graduated from Wiley High School, Terre Haute and Rose Polytechnic Institute , Terre Haute, and Indiana University , Bloomington, Indiana.

#19448

Mark O'Shea

#19459

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Mark Timothy O'Shea is an English herpetologist, photographer, author, lecturer, and television personality. He is known internationally as the presenter of the Animal Planet/Discovery Channel series O'Shea's Big Adventure.

#19449

Serban Ghenea

#19460

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Serban Ghenea is a Canadian audio engineer and mixer. Early life and education Ghenea was born in Bucharest, Romania, in 1969. In 1976 he moved to Montreal with his family. He later attended John Abbott College, Concordia University, then McGill University.

#19450

Rufus Black

#19461

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Rufus Edward Ries Black is the vice-chancellor of the University of Tasmania. Early life and education Black was educated at Wesley College and the University of Melbourne, where he resided at Ormond College and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in politics and economics and a Bachelor of Laws with honours in 1994. He won a Rhodes Scholarship in 1992, and obtained a Diploma of Theology and Master of Philosophy in Ethics and Theology in 1994 from Keble College, Oxford. He was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy in Ethics and Theology from Magdalen College, Oxford in 1996. His DPhil thesis was entit...

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