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

#2101

Joseph Rudnick

#99129

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (81 years)

Joseph Alan Rudnick is an American physicist and professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at UCLA. Rudnick currently serves as the senior dean of the UCLA College of Letters and Science and dean of the Division of Physical Sciences. He previously served as the chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy. His research interests include condensed-matter physics, statistical mechanics, and biological physics.

#2102

Dick Bond

#99146

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (75 years)

John Richard Bond , also known as J. Richard Bond, is a Canadian astrophysicist and cosmologist. Bond received his bachelor's degree in 1973 from the University of Toronto and his PhD in theoretical physics in 1979 from Caltech under the supervision of William A. Fowler. Beginning in 1985 he has been a professor at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics and at the University of Toronto. He served 2 five-year terms as CITA's director, and since 2002 he has been the director of the Cosmology and Gravity Program for the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research .

#2103

Amy Fleischer

#99217

Overall Influence

Amy S. Fleischer is an American mechanical engineer whose research concerns thermal engineering, including sustainable energy, thermal energy storage using phase-change materials, and energy recovery from the heat management of electronic devices. She is dean of the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo College of Engineering.

#2104

Scott Hudson

#99220

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (66 years)

Raymond Scott Hudson is a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Washington State University. Hudson was educated at Caltech, where he received his bachelor's degree in engineering and applied science in 1985, his master's degree in electrical engineering in 1986, and his PhD in electrical engineering in 1990. His research interests include radar imaging, optical signal processing, and radar astronomy.

#2105

David B. Haviland

#99274

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (64 years)

David Brant Haviland , is a Swedish-American physicist, professor in nanostructure physics and mesoscopic physics at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden. Haviland grew up in Ames, Iowa, and studied physics at Union College 1979–83, New York. Within the Fulbright program 1983/84 he was at the University of Göttingen. He received his Ph.D. in 1989 at the University of Minnesota. Between 1989 and 1997 he worked at Chalmers University of Technology before joining the Royal Institute of Technology as a professor in 1997.

#2106

David Attwood

#99326

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (84 years)

David Attwood is an American physicist and professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, where he worked in the field of synchrotron radiation and free-electron lasers, developing X-ray microscopy techniques for research and for the industry . He is the author of a reference book on soft X-rays and extreme ultraviolet radiation.

#2107

Clifford Kubiak

#99351

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (72 years)

Clifford P. Kubiak is an American inorganic chemist, currently a Distinguished Professor in Chemistry and Biochemistry and the Harold C. Urey Chair in Chemistry at the University of California, San Diego. Over the course of his career, Kubiak has published over 200 scientific articles. He has also received the American Chemical Society Award in Inorganic Chemistry, and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and American Chemical Society. In 2020 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

#2108

Jose L. Jimenez

#99411

Overall Influence

José Luis Jiménez-Palacios is a Spanish–American chemist and engineer. As a professor of chemistry at the University of Colorado Boulder, Jimenez contributed to the establishment of the Aerodyne Aerosol Mass Spectrometer, an instrument for real-time analysis of aerosol size and composition.

#2109

Arnold Fredrickson

#99415

Overall Influence

1932 - 2017 (85 years)

Arnold Gerhard Fredrickson was an American chemical engineer and professor in the department of chemical engineering and materials science at the University of Minnesota. He was known for his work in transport phenomena, bioengineering and population dynamics. Fredrickson was the author of over 100 scientific publications and advisor to over 50 graduate students. He was recognized for his contributions to chemical engineering with election as fellow to the American Association for the Advancement of Science and fellow and founding member of the American Institute of Medical and Biological ...

#2110

James L. Skinner

James L. Skinner

#99457

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (72 years)

James L. Skinner is an American theoretical chemist. He is the Joseph O. and Elizabeth S. Hirschfelder Professor Emeritus at the University Wisconsin-Madison. He is also a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Welch Foundation. Most recently, Skinner was the Crown Family Professor of Molecular Engineering, professor of chemistry, director of the Water Research Initiative and deputy dean for faculty affairs of the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago. Skinner is recognized for his contributions to the fields of theoretical chemistry, nonequilibrium sta...

#2111

Stewart Shuman

#99472

Overall Influence

#2112

Kate Carroll

#99482

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (51 years)

Kate Carroll is an American professor of chemistry, chemical biology, and biochemistry at Scripps Research in Jupiter, FL, since 2010. She was previously a tenure-track assistant professor at the University of Michigan.

#2113

H. John Caulfield

#99500

Overall Influence

1936 - 2012 (76 years)

H. John Caulfield was an American physicist who specialized in holography and optical computing. He was the author of numerous refereed publications, a Fellow of the Optical Society of America and the SPIE. He was also awarded the SPIE Gold Medal in 2005.

#2114

K. Dane Wittrup

#99557

Overall Influence

K. Dane Wittrup is an American engineer who is the Carbon P. Dubbs Professor in Chemical Engineering and Biological Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology . He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2012. His research has made advancements in protein engineering and biopharmaceutical engineering.

#2115

Garrett Jernigan

#99609

Overall Influence

J. Garrett Jernigan was an American physicist and astronomer who has made notable contributions to space astronomy, particularly in the areas of X-ray and infrared instrumentation. He received his Ph.D. at MIT, where he worked on the SAS 3 X-ray astronomy satellite. After leaving MIT he moved to UC Berkeley, where he has worked in many areas of astronomical instrumentation, observation, and theory. He currently advises the CubeSat program at Sonoma State University.

#2116

Philip R. Christensen

#99625

Overall Influence

#2117

Michale Fee

#99637

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (61 years)

Michale Sean Fee is an American neuroscientist who works on the neural mechanisms of sequence generation and learning. Michale Fee is faculty in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and an Investigator in the McGovern Institute for Brain Research. His laboratory studies how songbirds generate and learn complex vocal sequences.

#2118

Edward Angel

#99728

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (81 years)

Edward Stanley Angel is an emeritus professor of computer science at the University of New Mexico. He has published numerous books and journal articles including many successful titles on OpenGL.

#2119

Yanga R. Fernández

#99895

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (54 years)

Yanga Roland Fernández is a Canadian-born American astronomer at the University of Central Florida. Together with Scott S. Sheppard, he co-discovered the Carme group, a group of moons of the planet Jupiter.

#2120

Martin Richardson

#99906

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (84 years)

Martin Richardson is a British-American scientist and Professor of Physics. He is best known for the development of high power lasers, and for their use in understanding laser-induced plasma. Biography Martin Richardson received his B.Sc. in 1964 from Imperial College London. He completed his Ph.D. at London University in 1966, and he completed postdoctoral training Culham Laboratory. Professor Richardson worked at the National Research Council until 1979 when he joined the University of Rochester. In 1990, he moved to the University of Central Florida with appointments as a Professor of Physics and as a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

#2121

Maureen C. Stone

#100157

Overall Influence

Maureen C. Stone is an American computer scientist, specializing in color modeling. Biography Stone has bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and another master's degree from the California Institute of Technology. She worked for many years at Xerox PARC. After leaving PARC, she founded a consulting firm in the Seattle, Washington area in 1998, and became is an adjunct professor in the School for Interactive Arts and Technology at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. She joined Tableau Research in 2011, and headed the com...

#2122

John W. Harbaugh

John W. Harbaugh

#100176

Overall Influence

1926 - 2019 (93 years)

John Warvelle Harbaugh was an American geologist who spent most of his professional career at Stanford University devoted to research on mathematical modeling of dynamic systems, sedimentary basin simulation and oil exploration risk analysis. Since 1999, he was Professor Emeritus both at the Geological and Environmental Sciences Department and at the Energy Resources Engineering Department.

#2123

Jeroen van den Brink

#100182

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (57 years)

Jeroen van den Brink is a theoretical condensed matter physicist, director at the Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research, IFW Dresden and professor at the Dresden University of Technology in Germany. Van den Brink is known for contributions to the field of strongly correlated materials, in particular for proposals on magnetic and orbital ordering, mechanisms for multiferroicity and the theory of Resonant Inelastic X-Ray Scattering .

#2124

Jinsong Ren

#100200

Overall Influence

#2125

Ian Smail

#100216

Overall Influence

Ian Robert Smail is a British astrophysicist. He is Professor of Physics at the Durham University Department of Physics, based in the Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy, itself part of the Ogden Centre for Fundamental Physics. Since 2015, he has been ranked as one of the most highly-cited researchers in Space Sciences.

#2126

Edward M. Stolper

#100224

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (73 years)

#2127

Andreas Luttge

#100241

Overall Influence

Andreas Lüttge is Professor of Earth Science and Professor of Chemistry at Rice University in Houston, Texas . He was also director of the National Corrosion Center until 2010. The primary concerns of his research are surface chemical processes at minerals and rocks from low-temperature conditions up to the pressure and temperature conditions throughout the Earth's crust.

#2128

Kai-Ming Ho

#100323

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (75 years)

Kai-Ming Ho is a senior physicist at Ames Laboratory and distinguished professor in Department of Physics and Astronomy at Iowa State University. Honors 2012 Aneesur Rahman Prize for Computational Physics

#2129

Joyce Wong

#100342

Overall Influence

Joyce Y. Wong is an American engineer who is Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering at Boston University. Her research develops novel biomaterials for the early detection treatment of disease. Wong is the Inaugural Director of the Provost's Initiative to promote gender equality and inclusion in STEM at all levels: Advance, Recruit, Retain and Organize Women in STEM. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and Biomedical Engineering Society.

#2130

Vladimir Kocharovsky

#100381

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (70 years)

Vladimir Kocharovsky is a Russian physicist, academic and researcher. He is a Head of the Astrophysics and Space Plasma Physics Department at the Institute of Applied Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences and a professor at N.I. Lobachevsky State University of Nizhny Novgorod.

#2131

Lois K. Miller

#100446

Overall Influence

1945 - 1999 (54 years)

Lois Kathryn Miller was an American geneticist and academic. She was a Distinguished Research Professor of Genetics and Entomology at the University of Georgia. A graduate of Upsala College, she taught at the University of Idaho before moving to Georgia. Miller's research was related to baculoviruses, which infect agricultural pests. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and was a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

#2132

Mitchell Kronenberg

#100447

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (74 years)

Mitchell Kronenberg is an American immunologist and the chief scientific officer at La Jolla Institute for Immunology. He served as president of the institute from 2003 to 2021. Education Kronenberg received his Bachelor of Science degree from Columbia University in 1973 and a Ph.D. from the California Institute of Technology, where he stayed on to complete postdoctoral work in the laboratory of Leroy Hood.

#2133

Kathleen E. Cullen

#100523

Overall Influence

Kathleen E. Cullen is an American–Canadian biomedical engineer and neuroscientist. She is known for her work combining computational and systems neuroscience to understand how the brain encodes and processes self-motion information to ensure the maintenance of balance and stable perception. Her research also focuses on extending this knowledge to further advance the development of novel diagnostic tools, treatments, training, and rehabilitative strategies for patients.

#2134

Kenneth Case

#100528

Overall Influence

1923 - 2006 (83 years)

Kenneth Myron Case was an American physicist and applied mathematician, best known for his use of the mathematical methods of quantum field theory and transport theory to a wide range of applied problems, especially many relevant to U.S. national security. He was an early member of the JASON advisory group.

#2135

Sigrid Close

#100620

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (54 years)

Sigrid Close is a professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University. Her primary research interest is the space environment with particular focus on meteoroids, meteors, and orbital debris, and their interaction with spacecraft and spacecraft operations.

#2136

William Douglas Allen

#100625

Overall Influence

1914 - 2008 (94 years)

William Douglas Allen was a physicist and electrical engineer. Allen was born on 27 July 1914 in Mussooree, British India. He was educated in South Australia at Prince Alfred College and the University of Adelaide, where he received a BSc in 1935. In 1937, he was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to New College, Oxford, where he completed a D.Phil. in 1940.

#2137

Doug Worsnop

#100669

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (73 years)

Douglas R. Worsnop is an American atmosphere and hydrospheric scientist, a significant figure in his field, currently at Aerodyne Research and an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters.

#2138

Alan David White

#100680

Overall Influence

1923 - 2020 (97 years)

Alan David White was an American physicist, known primarily as one of the inventors of the visible helium-neon laser. Biography After completing his military service during World War II, White graduated due to the G.I. Bill. He earned degrees in physics and mathematics from Rutgers University and Syracuse University. From 1953 to 1983 he worked at Bell Laboratories. Then he was a scientific consultant for Tropel Corp.

#2139

W. J. Seeley

#100745

Overall Influence

Walter J. Seeley served as the Dean of Duke University's Edmund T. Pratt Jr. School of Engineering from 1953 until 1963. He also served as chairman of the Electrical Engineering Department at Duke University. He was formerly an engineering professor at University of Pennsylvania. During World War II, he served as Director of the Naval Ordnance Laboratory. He graduated from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn . The Walter J. Seeley Scholastic Award is awarded annually at Duke University to the member of the graduating class of the Edmund T. Pratt Jr. School of Engineering who has achieved th...

#2140

Bart J. Currie

#100820

Overall Influence

#2141

Peter Asbeck

#100828

Overall Influence

Peter Asbeck is an American engineer, currently the Skyworks Professor in High Performance Communications Devices and Circuits at the University of California, San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering, and a publisher author. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering. for contributions to heterojunction bipolar transistor and integrated circuit technology. He is a power amplifier expert. In 2000, Peter Asbeck was elevated to IEEE fellow for development of heterostructure bipolar transistors and applications.

#2142

Paul Patterson

#101005

Overall Influence

1943 - 2014 (71 years)

Paul H. Patterson was a neuroscientist and the Anne P. and Benjamin F. Biaggini Professor of Biological Sciences at the California Institute of Technology. Life and work Paul Patterson was born in Chicago, Illinois, to Paul and Marge Patterson. His uncle, Clair Patterson, was a scientist who influenced Paul’s future career. He grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, moved to Minnesota during high school, and attended Grinnell College for his undergraduate studies. He completed his PhD in biology at Johns Hopkins University with William Lennarz in 1970. He then moved to Harvard University as a post...

#2143

Necia H. Apfel

#101235

Overall Influence

1930 - Present (95 years)

Necia H. Apfel is an American astronomer, author and educator. Personal life She graduated magna cum laude from Tufts University and did graduate work at Radcliffe College and Northwestern University. Apfel has lectured about astronomy to children in the Chicago area and taught courses on the teaching of astronomy at National-Louis University in Evanston, Illinois. She is author of two college textbooks on astronomy and ten books for children. Apfel lives in Highland Park, Illinois. She is currently retired and is a volunteer and past President of the Friends of the Highland Park Public Libra...

#2144

Jessica Werk

#101265

Overall Influence

Jessica K. Werk is an American astronomer and an associate professor in the Department of Astronomy at the University of Washington. Her work includes the study of intergalactic and interstellar media. Werk was a Hubble fellow at the University of California, Santa Cruz from 2013 to 2016, and won the $65,000 Sloan Fellowship in 2018. Her research focuses on the role of gas in the formation and evolution of galaxies and the intergalactic medium, primarily through spectroscopic observations in the optical and ultraviolet.

#2145

Fredrik Zachariasen

#101324

Overall Influence

1931 - 1999 (68 years)

Fredrik "Fred" Zachariasen was an American theoretical physicist, known for his collaborative work with Murray Gell-Mann, Sidney Drell, and others. Early life and education Fredrik Zachariasen was born in 1931 in Chicago, Illinois. His father was the physicist William Houlder Zachariasen.

#2146

John Michael Cornwall

#101407

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (91 years)

John Michael Cornwall is an American theoretical physicist who does research on elementary particle physics and quantum field theory as well as geophysics and physics of near-space. He is known for the Pinch Technique.

#2147

David J Kwiatkowski

#101412

Overall Influence

#2148

William Kenneth Hartmann

#101458

Overall Influence

#2149

Glenn Lipscomb

#101511

Overall Influence

Dr. G. Glenn Lipscomb is a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Toledo. He served as department chair from 2004 to 2019. Additionally, he is a fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers. He received his BS in chemical engineering from the University of Missouri-Rolla in 1981, and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. He has a large volume of academic work including journals, conference proceedings, and patents.

#2150

Michael Therien

#101544

Overall Influence

Michael J. Therien is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Chemistry at Duke University. Career Therien received his B.S. in Chemistry from University of St. Andrews in 1982. He began his studies in organometallic chemistry at University of California, San Diego, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1987 working with William C. Trogler. Upon completion of his Ph.D. in 1987, he was a National Institutes of Health Postdoctoral Fellow at the California Institute of Technology under Harry B. Gray. In 1990, he was appointed Assistant Professor of Chemistry at University of Pennsylvania, where he was promoted to Associate Professor in 1996, full Professor in 1997, and named Alan G.

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