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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School

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Ranking

List of the most influential people

#19451

Scott Fisher

#19462

Overall Influence

Scott Fisher is the Professor and Founding Chair of the Interactive Media Division in the USC School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California, and Director of the Mobile and Environmental Media Lab there. He is an artist and technologist who has worked extensively on virtual reality, including pioneering work at NASA, Atari Research Labs, MIT's Architecture Machine Group and Keio University.

#19452

Timothy Geithner

#19463

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Timothy Franz Geithner is an American former central banker who served as the 75th United States Secretary of the Treasury under President Barack Obama from 2009 to 2013. He was the President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York from 2003 to 2009, following service in the Clinton administration. Since March 2014, he has served as president and managing director of Warburg Pincus, a private equity firm headquartered in New York City.

#19453

Geert Lovink

#19464

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Geert Lovink is the founding director of the Institute of Network Cultures, whose goals are to explore, document and feed the potential for socio-economical change of the new media field through events, publications and open dialogue. As theorist, activist and net critic, Lovink has made an effort in helping to shape the development of the web.

#19454

Timothy Smiley

#19465

Overall Influence

1930 - Present (96 years)

Timothy John Smiley FBA is a British philosopher, appointed Emeritus Knightbridge Professor of Philosophy at Clare College, Cambridge University. He works primarily in philosophy of mathematics and logic.

#19455

Daniel H. H. Ingalls Sr.

#19466

Overall Influence

1916 - 1999 (83 years)

Daniel Henry Holmes Ingalls Sr. was the Wales Professor of Sanskrit at Harvard University. Early life and education Ingalls was born in New York City and raised in Virginia. He received his A.B. in 1936 at Harvard University, as a major in Greek and Latin. He also earned his A.M. in 1938 studying symbolic logic under Willard Van Orman Quine

#19456

Giovanni Leone

#19467

Overall Influence

1908 - 2001 (93 years)

Giovanni Leone was an Italian politician, jurist and university professor. A founding member of the Christian Democracy , Leone served as the President of Italy from December 1971 until June 1978. He also briefly served as Prime Minister of Italy from June to December 1963 and again from June to December 1968. He was also the president of the Chamber of Deputies from May 1955 until June 1963.

#19457

Allan C. Carlson

Allan C. Carlson

#19468

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Allan C. Carlson is a scholar and former professor of history at Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan. He is the President Emeritus of the Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society, former director of the Family in America Studies Center, founder and long time International Secretary of the World Congress of Families and editor of The Natural Family: An International Journal of Research and Policy newsletter. He is also former president of the Rockford Institute.

#19458

Michael Frede

#19469

Overall Influence

1940 - 2007 (67 years)

Michael Frede was a prominent scholar of ancient philosophy, described by The Telegraph as "one of the most important and adventurous scholars of ancient philosophy of recent times." Education and career Frede earned his Ph.D. at the University of Göttingen in 1966 and worked there as an assistant from 1966 to 1971.

#19459

James Earl Ray

#19470

Overall Influence

1928 - 1998 (70 years)

James Earl Ray was an American fugitive who assassinated Martin Luther King Jr. at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968. After the assassination, Ray fled the United States and was captured in the United Kingdom. Ray was convicted in 1969 after entering a guilty plea—thus forgoing a jury trial and the possibility of a death sentence—and was sentenced to 99 years of imprisonment.

#19460

Abel Klein

#19471

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Abel Klein is a Brazilian-American mathematician, specializing in mathematical physics and, more specifically, random Schrödinger operators for disordered systems. He received in 1971 his Doctor of Philosophy degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the supervision of Irving Segal with the thesis Regularity and Covariance Properties of Quantum Fields with Applications to Currents and Generalized Free Fields. Klein was from 1971 to 1972 an adjunct assistant professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and from 1972 to 1974 an instructor at Princeton University. At...

#19461

George Rudé

#19472

Overall Influence

1910 - 1993 (83 years)

George Rudé was a British Marxist historian, specializing in the French Revolution and "history from below", especially the importance of crowds in history. Early life Born in Oslo, the son of Jens Essendrop Rude, a Norwegian engineer, and Amy Geraldine Elliot, an English woman educated in Germany, Rudé spent his early years in Norway. After World War I, his family moved to England, where he was educated at Shrewsbury School and Trinity College, Cambridge. A specialist in modern languages, he taught at Stowe and St. Paul's schools. After completing university, Rudé took a trip to the Soviet Union with friends.

#19462

Andrei Tsygankov

#19473

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Andrei Pavlovich Tsygankov is a Russian-born academic and author in the field of international relations at San Francisco State University. Early life and education Tsygankov received his Candidate of Sciences degree at Moscow State University in 1991 and after emigration a PhD from University of Southern California in 2000.

#19463

Brendan O'Leary

Brendan O'Leary

#19474

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Brendan O'Leary is an Irish political scientist, who is Lauder Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. He was formerly a professor at the London School of Economics. In 2009–10 he was the second Senior Advisor on Power-Sharing in the Standby Team of the Mediation Support Unit of the Department of Political Affairs of the United Nations.

#19464

James Fleck

#19475

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (95 years)

James Douglas Fleck, , sometimes known as Jim Fleck, is a Canadian businessman and academic. Personal Fleck was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada on February 10, 1931, to Robert Douglas and Norma Marie Fleck.

#19465

Shelley Winters

Shelley Winters

#19476

Overall Influence

1920 - 2006 (86 years)

Shelley Winters was an American actress whose career spanned seven decades. She appeared in numerous films. She won Academy Awards for The Diary of Anne Frank and A Patch of Blue , and received nominations for A Place in the Sun and The Poseidon Adventure . She also appeared in A Double Life , The Night of the Hunter , Lolita , Alfie , Next Stop, Greenwich Village , and Pete's Dragon . In addition to film, Winters appeared in television, including a tenure on the sitcom Roseanne, and wrote three autobiographical books.

#19466

Hisao Yamada

#19477

Overall Influence

1930 - 2008 (78 years)

Hisao Yamada was a Japanese computer scientist, known for his influential contributions to theoretical computer science, as well as for the development of Japanese keyboard layouts, a challenging practical problem. From 1972 to 1991, he was professor of the formal languages division at the Department for Information Science at the University of Tokyo.

#19467

Sally Shlaer

#19478

Overall Influence

1938 - 1998 (60 years)

Sally hashim Shlaer was an American mathematician, software engineer and methodologist, known as co-developer of the 1980s Shlaer–Mellor method for software development. Biography Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Shlaer received a BS in Mathematics in 1960 from Stanford University and started a graduate study at the Australian National University.

#19468

Walter Kempowski

Walter Kempowski

#19479

Overall Influence

1929 - 2007 (78 years)

Walter Kempowski was a German writer. Kempowski was known for his series of novels called German Chronicle and the monumental Echolot , a collage of autobiographical reports, letters and other documents by contemporary witnesses of the Second World War.

#19469

William F. Nolan

William F. Nolan

#19480

Overall Influence

1928 - 2021 (93 years)

William Francis Nolan was an American author who wrote hundreds of stories in the science fiction, fantasy, horror, and crime fiction genres. Career Nolan became involved in science-fiction fandom in the 1950s, and published several fanzines, including Ray Bradbury Review. During this time, Nolan befriended several science-fiction and fantasy writers, including Ray Bradbury, Robert Bloch, Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont, and Ray Russell. Nolan became a professional author in 1956. Nolan is perhaps best known for coauthoring the novel Logan's Run, with George Clayton Johnson, but wrote l...

#19470

Helen M. Berman

Helen M. Berman

#19481

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Helen Miriam Berman is a Board of Governors Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Rutgers University and a former director of the RCSB Protein Data Bank . A structural biologist, her work includes structural analysis of protein-nucleic acid complexes, and the role of water in molecular interactions. She is also the founder and director of the Nucleic Acid Database, and led the Protein Structure Initiative Structural Genomics Knowledgebase.

#19471

Dovid Gottlieb

#19482

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Dovid Gottlieb is a senior faculty member at Ohr Somayach in Jerusalem. An author and lecturer, Rabbi Gottlieb received his Ph.D. in mathematical logic at Brandeis University and later become Associate Professor of Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University. A student of Jean Van Heijenoort, he received a doctorate in 1970 for his thesis The Use of Formal Systems in Logic and Mathematics. The Informed Soul was published by Artscroll in 1990, and has recently been reprinted.

#19472

Aaron Spelling

#19483

Overall Influence

1923 - 2006 (83 years)

Aaron Spelling was an American film and television producer and occasional actor. His productions included the TV series Family , Charlie's Angels , The Love Boat , Hart to Hart , Dynasty , Beverly Hills, 90210 , Melrose Place , 7th Heaven , and Charmed . He also served as producer of The Mod Squad , The Rookies , and Sunset Beach .

#19473

Cyril Mango

#19484

Overall Influence

1928 - 2021 (93 years)

Cyril Alexander Mango was a British scholar of the history, art, and architecture of the Byzantine Empire. He is celebrated as one of the leading Byzantinists of the 20th century. Mango was Koraes Professor of Modern Greek and Byzantine History, Language and Literature at King's College London, the University of Oxford Bywater and Sotheby Professor Emeritus of Byzantine and Modern Greek Language and Literature and emeritus professorial fellow of Exeter College, Oxford.

#19474

Harold Amos

#19485

Overall Influence

1918 - 2003 (85 years)

Harold Amos was an American microbiologist. He taught at Harvard Medical School for nearly fifty years and was the first African-American department chair of the school. Early life Amos was born in Pennsauken, New Jersey to Howard R. Amos Sr., a Philadelphia postman, and Iola Johnson. Iola Johnson was adopted and educated by a Philadelphia Quaker family. Due to the close relationship between Iola and the Quaker family, the Amos family received a lot of books, including a biography of Louis Pasteur. Excelling as a student, Amos graduated in 1936 at the top of his class from Camden High School in New Jersey.

#19475

Feng-hsiung Hsu

#19486

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Feng-hsiung Hsu is a Taiwanese-American computer scientist and the author of the book Behind Deep Blue: Building the Computer that Defeated the World Chess Champion. His work led to the creation of the Deep Thought chess computer, which led to the first chess playing computer to defeat grandmasters in tournament play and the first to achieve a certified grandmaster-level rating.

#19476

Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im

#19487

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Abdullahi Ahmed An-Na'im is a Sudanese-born Islamic scholar who lives in the United States and teaches at Emory University. He is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Law at Emory University School of Law, associated professor in the Emory College of Arts and Sciences, and Senior Fellow of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion of Emory University.

#19477

Victor H. Mair

#19488

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Victor Henry Mair is an American sinologist. He is a professor of Chinese at the University of Pennsylvania. Among other accomplishments, Mair has edited the standard Columbia History of Chinese Literature and the Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature. Mair is the series editor of the Cambria Sinophone World Series , and his book coauthored with Miriam Robbins Dexter , Sacred Display: Divine and Magical Female Figures of Eurasia, won the Sarasvati Award for the Best Nonfiction Book in Women and Mythology.

#19478

Béla Balassa

#19489

Overall Influence

1928 - 1991 (63 years)

Béla Alexander Balassa was a Hungarian economist and professor at Johns Hopkins University and a consultant for the World Bank. Balassa is best known for his work on the relationship between purchasing power parity and cross-country productivity differences . He is also known for his work on revealed comparative advantage.

#19479

Eleanor Robson

#19490

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Eleanor Robson, is a British Assyriologist and academic. She is Professor of Ancient Middle Eastern History at University College London. She is a former chair of the British Institute for the Study of Iraq and a Quondam fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. She is a Fellow of the British Academy.

#19480

Heinz Ellenberg

#19491

Overall Influence

1913 - 1997 (84 years)

Heinz Ellenberg was a German biologist, botanist and ecologist. Ellenberg was an advocate of viewing ecological systems through holistic means. He developed 9–point scales for rating European plant preferences for light, temperature, continentality , nutrients, soil moisture, pH, and salinity.

#19481

David P. Dobkin

#19492

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

David Paul Dobkin is an American computer scientist and the Phillip Y. Goldman '86 Professor of Computer Science at Princeton University. His research has concerned computational geometry and computer graphics.

#19482

Nariman Mehta

#19493

Overall Influence

1920 - 2014 (94 years)

Nariman Bomanshaw Mehta was an Indian-born American organic chemist and pharmacologist who designed, synthesized, and patented the organic compound bupropion, marketed under the name Wellbutrin as an antidepressant and smoking cessation aid.

#19483

John Baker

#19494

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Sir John Hamilton Baker, KC , LLD, FBA, FRHistS is an English legal historian. He was Downing Professor of the Laws of England at the University of Cambridge from 1998 to 2011. Biography Baker was born in Sheffield, the son of Kenneth Lee Vincent and Marjorie Baker . He was educated at King Edward VI Grammar School, Chelmsford, and University College London . He was called to the Bar at the Inner Temple in 1966 and was elected an Honorary Bencher in 1988.

#19484

Dick Wolf

#19495

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Richard Anthony Wolf is an American film and television producer, best known for his Law & Order franchise. Since 1990, the franchise has included six police/courtroom dramas and four international spinoffs. He is also creator and executive producer of the Chicago franchise, which since 2012 has included four Chicago-based dramas, and the creator and executive producer of the FBI franchise, which since 2018 has also become a franchise after spinning off two additional series.

#19485

Dawn Freshwater

#19496

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Dawn Freshwater is a British academic, university professor, mental health researcher, and the incumbent Vice-Chancellor of the University of Auckland. Early life and education Freshwater was born in a mining family in Nottingham, with two younger brothers. She left school at the age of 15 because her parents became unwell. Freshwater trained as a nurse and was the first member of her family to attend university. Her doctoral research investigated the impact of transformative learning on nursing students for which she awarded a PhD by the University of Nottingham in 1998.

#19486

Erkki Ruoslahti

#19497

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Erkki Ruoslahti is a cancer researcher and distinguished professor at Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute. He moved from Finland to the United States in 1976. Ruoslahti made seminal contributions to biology of extracellular matrix and its receptors. He was one of the discoverers of fibronectin, an adhesion molecule and component of extracellular matrices, and he subsequently identified and cloned a number of other extracellular matrix components and adhesion molecules. In 1984, he identified the sequence within fibronectin that mediates cell attachment, called RGD for the amino...

#19487

Chandrabose

#19498

Overall Influence

Kanukuntla Subhash Chandrabose is an Indian lyricist and playback singer who works in Telugu films. Chandrabose debuted as a lyricist with the 1995 film Taj Mahal. In a career spanning over 25 years, he has written lyrics for about 3600 songs in over 850 films. Chandrabose won an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award for the song "Naatu Naatu" from RRR . He has received one National Award, two Nandi Awards, two Filmfare Awards, and three SIIMA Awards as a lyricist.

#19488

Ian Hargreaves

#19499

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Ian Richard Hargreaves CBE is Professor Emeritus at Cardiff University, Wales, UK. Career His career in British journalism includes several beats at the Financial Times, as well as Directorship of BBC News & Current Affairs, Editorship of The Independent, and Editorship of the New Statesman.

#19489

Matt Jones

#19500

Overall Influence

Matt Jones is the co-author - with Gary Marsden - of Mobile Interaction Design and a full research Professor at Swansea University. With the late Marsden and Simon Robinson he authored a new book in 2015 - There's Not an App for That . He is an active researcher and has organized large scale of scientific conferences such as ACM CHI 2014. He has also edited several special issues of journals including an ACM ToCHI journal special issue on social issues and the "turn to the wild".

#19490

Jeff Ma

#19501

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Jeff Ma or Jeffrey Ma is a former member of the MIT Blackjack Team in the mid-1990s. He graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy. He attended MIT where he graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering in 1994. He was the basis for the main character of the book Bringing Down the House and the film 21 . Ma also co-founded PROTRADE and does consulting work for professional sports teams including the Portland Trail Blazers and San Francisco 49ers. He cofounded Citizen Sports, a sport-information website and iPhone application based in San Francisco, which was acquired by Yahoo! in May 2010.

#19491

Artis Gilmore

#19502

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Artis Gilmore Sr. is an American former professional basketball player who played in the American Basketball Association and National Basketball Association . Gilmore was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame on August 12, 2011.

#19492

Harvey Leonard

#19503

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Harvey Leonard is a former chief meteorologist on WCVB-TV Channel 5 in Boston, Massachusetts. For 25 years, Leonard was previously best known as a meteorologist at Boston's WHDH-TV . Education Leonard earned his B.S. in Meteorology from the City College of New York in 1970 and an M.S. in Meteorology from New York University,

#19493

Jan Węglarz

#19504

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Jan Węglarz is a Polish computer scientist. His current research focuses on operations research. He studied at the University of Adam Mickiewicz in Poznań, where he graduated in mathematics in 1969, and later on Poznań University of Technology, when he received title from automatics in 1971. He started work there in 1971. He received a doctorate in 1974, and habilitation in 1977. In 1988 he received the title of professor. Member of Polish Academy of Sciences , member-co-founder of Polish Information Processing Society , member of American Mathematical Society, Operations Research Society of America, member of Poznan Chapter of Agder Academy of Sciences and Letters.

#19494

Nobuo Tanaka

#19505

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Nobuo Tanaka is the Japanese official and the former Executive Director of the International Energy Agency. He was born on 3 March 1950 in Japan. He graduated from the University of Tokyo in the field of economics in 1972, and has an MBA from Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio . In 1973 he began his career with the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry of Japan . In 1989 he joined the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development as the Deputy-Director for Science, Technology and Industry, and served in 1991–1995 as the Director for Science, Technology and Industry.

#19495

Raj Mittra

#19506

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (94 years)

Raj Mittra is an Indian-born electrical engineer and academician. He is currently a professor of electrical engineering at University of Central Florida. Previously, he was a faculty member at University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and Pennsylvania State University, where he was the director of the Electromagnetic Communication Laboratory of the Electrical Engineering department. His specialities include computational electromagnetics and communication antenna design.

#19496

Fabrice Bellard

#19507

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Fabrice Bellard is a French computer programmer known for writing FFmpeg, QEMU, and the Tiny C Compiler. He developed Bellard's formula for calculating single digits of pi. In 2012, Bellard co-founded Amarisoft, a telecommunications company, with Franck Spinelli.

#19497

Roger Fletcher

#19508

Overall Influence

1939 - 2016 (77 years)

Roger Fletcher FRS FRSE was a British mathematician and professor at University of Dundee. He was a Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics and was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2003.

#19498

Stelian Tănase

#19509

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Stelian Tănase is a Romanian writer, journalist, political analyst, and talk show host. Tănase was from November 2013 to October 2015 the president of TVR. Having briefly engaged in politics during the early 1990s, after the fall of the Communist regime, he has remained a leading figure of the Romanian civil society.

#19499

Edward Kofler

#19510

Overall Influence

1911 - 2007 (96 years)

Edward Kofler was a mathematician who made important contributions to game theory and fuzzy logic by working out the theory of linear partial information. Biography Kofler was born in Brzeżany, Austrian-Hungarian empire and graduated as a disciple of among others Hugo Steinhaus and Stefan Banach from the University of Lwów Poland and the University of Cracow, having studied game theory. After graduation in 1939 Kofler returned to his family in Kolomyia , where he taught mathematics in a Polish high school. After German attack on the town 1 July 1941 he succeeded to escape to Kazakhstan together with his wife.

#19500

William Arveson

William Arveson

#19511

Overall Influence

1934 - 2011 (77 years)

William B. Arveson was a mathematician specializing in operator algebras who worked as a professor of Mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley. Biography Arveson obtained his Ph.D. from UCLA in 1964 with thesis advisor Henry Dye and thesis Prediction theory and group representations.

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