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

#2151

Rob B. Phillips

#101561

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (65 years)

Rob Brooks Phillips is an American biophysicist. He is currently Fred and Nancy Morris Professor of Biophysics, Biology, and Physics at the California Institute of Technology. Biography Phillips originally did not intend to go to college and took an unconventional educational path, earning a bachelor's degree by independent study at the University of Minnesota in 1986. He then received his doctorate in physics at Washington University in St. Louis in 1989. He was a professor at Brown University and has been a professor at Caltech since 2000. He enjoys surfing.

#2152

David Newman

#101589

Overall Influence

David E. Newman is a professor in the physics department at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He has a Ph.D. in plasma physics and conducts research on transport dynamics in fusion energy using numerical and complex systems models.

#2153

Jianjun Shi

#101656

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (62 years)

Jianjun "Jan" Shi is a Chinese-born American engineer and the Carolyn J. Stewart Chair and Professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering. He also works at the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He was elected as a member into the National Academy of Engineering in 2018 for the "development of data fusion-based quality methods and their implementation in multistage manufacturing systems".

#2154

Larry Norton

#101737

Overall Influence

#2155

William B. Russel

#101797

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (80 years)

William Bailey Russel was an American chemical engineer, Arthur W. Marks '19 Professor of Chemical Engineering, emeritus, and dean emeritus of the graduate school at Princeton University. He earned his BA and MChE degrees at Rice University in 1969 and his PhD at Stanford University in 1973. He was a NATO Postdoctoral Fellow at Cambridge University in 1974.

#2156

Lisa Ainsworth

#101828

Overall Influence

Elizabeth Anna Ainsworth is an American plant physiologist currently employed by the United States Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service . She also is an adjunct professor of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign , a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and was awarded the 2018 Crop Science Society of America Presidential Award. She is known for her work concerning the effects of specific atmospheric pollutants, including ozone and carbon dioxide, on the productivity of selected major crops such as corn and soybeans.

#2157

Baljit S. Khakh

#101862

Overall Influence

Baljit Singh Khakh is a British neuroscientist and Professor of Physiology and Neurobiology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Education and career Baljit Khakh completed his Ph.D. at University of Cambridge in 1995 in the laboratory of Patrick PA Humphrey. He then completed postdoctoral fellowships first in the laboratory of Graeme Henderson at the University of Bristol, then in the laboratories of Henry A. Lester and Norman Davidson at California Institute of Technology. In 2001, Khakh joined the faculty as a Group Leader at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology. In 2006, Khakh ...

#2158

Charles Lawrence

#101919

Overall Influence

Charles "Chip" Lawrence is an American bioinformatician and mathematician, who is the pioneer in developing novel statistical approaches to biological sequence analysis. After his PhD graduation, Lawrence became the assistant professor in Systems Engineering and Operations Research and Statistics, in Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. In the same time period of time , Lawrence worked as the consultant to the Ministry of Maternal and Child Health in Dominican Republic. From 1975 to 1981, he worked in the New York State Department of Health as the Director of Operations Research and Statistics, i...

#2159

Natan Andrei

#101933

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (25 years)

Natan Andrei is an American theoretical physicist who deals with solid state physics and particle physics. He is a distinguished professor at Rutgers University. Andrei received his doctorate in 1979 from Princeton University under supervision of David Gross. In 1989 he was at the Institute for Advanced Study. In 2004 he became a Fellow of the American Physical Society. Independently of Paul Wiegmann, he succeeded in 1980 in finding the exact solution of the Kondo problem. In 2017, both were awarded the Lars Onsager Prize. With John H. Lowenstein, he solved the Chiral Gross–Neveu model usin...

#2160

Dean Neikirk

#102000

Overall Influence

Dean Neikirk is an American engineer, who is currently the Cullen Trust for Higher Education Endowed Professor in Engineering #7 in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin.

#2161

Julia A. Kornfield

#102062

Overall Influence

Julia A. Kornfield is a Professor of Chemical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology. A world expert in polymer science, Kornfield's research encompasses the development of mega-supramolecular systems for fuel additives and intraocular lenses, as well as the influence of flow on polymer chains.

#2162

C. Peter Flynn

#102117

Overall Influence

1935 - 2011 (76 years)

C. Peter Flynn was a Professor of Physics and of Materials Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Professor Flynn was on the faculty of the University of Illinois from 1960 until 2011 and served as the director of the Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory from 1978 until 1987. He was a fellow of both the American Physical Society and the American Society for Metals, and was Chairman of the Department of Energy Council on Materials between 1985 and 2005.

#2163

Andrew Ronald Mitchell

#102138

Overall Influence

1921 - 2007 (86 years)

Andrew Ronald Mitchell was a British applied mathematician and numerical analyst. He was a professor of mathematics at the University of St Andrews, Dundee, Scotland. He was known for his contributions to the field of numerical analysis of partial differential equations in general and finite difference method and finite element method in particular. Mitchell has authored several influential books on numerical solution of partial differential equations, including "The Finite Element Analysis in Partial Differential Equations" with Richard Wait and "The Finite Difference Method in Partial Differential Equations" with David F.

#2164

Olivier Pfister

#102217

Overall Influence

Olivier Pfister is a US physicist, professor of Experimental Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics at the University of Virginia. He obtained his doctorate in physics in 1993 at Paris 13 University. Olivier Pfister also specializes in the fields of Quantum Fields and Quantum Information.

#2165

José E. Andrade

#102242

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (46 years)

José E. Andrade is a professor of civil and mechanical engineering at the California Institute of Technology, where he holds the George W. Housner professorship. From January 2016 to February 2022, he served as Executive Officer and held the title of Cecil and Sally Drinkward Leadership Chair for Mechanical and Civil Engineering at Caltech.

#2166

Tulika Bose

#102395

Overall Influence

Tulika Bose is a Professor of Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, whose research focuses on developing triggers for experimental searches of new phenomena in high energy physics. Bose is a leader within the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment, a CERN collaboration famous for its experimental observation of the Higgs boson in 2012.

#2167

David J. Wald

#102425

Overall Influence

David Jay Wald is a seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey at the National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colorado. He is an affiliated faculty member at the Colorado School of Mines, and served as the editor-in-chief of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute's journal, Earthquake Spectra, from 2018–2022. He also served on the Southern California Earthquake Center Science Planning Committee, 2014–2020.

#2168

Nikhil Gupta

#102657

Overall Influence

Nikhil Gupta is a materials scientist, researcher, and professor based in Brooklyn, New York. Gupta is a professor at New York University Tandon School of Engineering department of mechanical and aerospace engineering. He is an elected Fellow of ASM International and the American Society for Composites. He is one of the leading researchers on lightweight foams and has extensively worked on hollow particle filled composite materials called syntactic foams. Gupta developed a new functionally graded syntactic foam material and a method to create multifunctional syntactic foams. His team has also created an ultralight magnesium alloy syntactic foam that is able to float on water.

#2169

Edward Rubin

#102722

Overall Influence

Edward Rubin is the chief scientific officer at Metabiota, a company that works on epidemic risk and infectious diseases. From 2002 to 2016, he was a researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the director of the Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute. In 2012, he was named the Charles J. and Lois B. Epstein Visiting Professor at the University of California San Francisco.

#2170

Nicholas Dyson

#102774

Overall Influence

Nicholas Dyson is Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, the James and Shirley Curvey MGH Research Scholar and Scientific Director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center. Research The Dyson Lab studies the retinoblastoma protein.

#2171

Bernard Yurke

#102775

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (74 years)

Bernard Yurke is an American physicist, currently a distinguished research professor at Boise State University and an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. See also DNA machineDNA nanotechnologySU InterferometryToehold mediated strand displacement

#2172

Randal Beard

#102855

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (25 years)

Randal W. Beard from the Brigham Young University, Provo, UT was named Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2015 for contributions to the theory and practice of guidance, control, and team coordination of unmanned aerial vehicles.

#2173

David A. Lind

#102877

Overall Influence

1918 - 2015 (97 years)

David Arthur Lind was an American physics professor, Guggenheim Fellow, mountain climber, and skier. He was part of a five-man team that made the first ascent of Forbidden Peak in the North Cascades in 1940.

#2174

Thor Rhodin

#103003

Overall Influence

1920 - 2006 (86 years)

Thor Nathaniel Rhodin was an American professor of Applied and Engineering Physics at Cornell University and the University of Chicago's James Franck Institute, and is credited with pioneering work in the birth and evolution of surface science beginning with his research on surface sensitivity using auger electron spectroscopy. He played a major role, over several decades, in shaping the development of the field from fundamental work, using the field ion microscope, on the imaging and bonding of individual atoms at surfaces to the fundamentals of surface catalysis of hydrocarbon chemistry by ...

#2175

William W. Simmons

#103144

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (93 years)

William W. Simmons is an American physicist at TRW and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory , notable for his development of electro-optical devices. Biography Simmons received his BA in Physics in 1953 from Carleton College and his MA in 1955 in Physics from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where in 1960 he also received his PhD in Physics.

#2176

Fernando Brandão

Fernando Brandão

#103148

Overall Influence

1983 - Present (42 years)

Fernando Brandão is a Brazilian physicist and computer scientist working on quantum information and quantum computation. He is currently the Bren Professor of Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology and Director of Quantum Applications at Amazon Web Services. Previously, he was a researcher at Microsoft and a reader in Computer Science at University College London.

#2177

John H. R. Maunsell

#103260

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (70 years)

John Henry Richard Maunsell is a British-American neuroscientist who is the Albert D. Lasker Professor of Neurobiology at the University of Chicago. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Formerly the editor-in-chief of The Journal of Neuroscience, as of 2021 he is a co-editor of the Annual Review of Vision Science.

#2178

Larry C. Olsen

#103279

Overall Influence

1937 - 2020 (83 years)

Larry C. Olsen was a pioneer in the commercialization of betavoltaic technology. While working for the McDonnell Douglas Corporation in the 1970s, Olsen lead the development of the first commercially available betavoltaic nuclear battery. Several hundred of these batteries were fabricated and a large number were used to power implanted heart pacemakers. Olsen has published more than 80 articles in the fields of betavoltaics, photovoltaics, thermoelectric materials, and solid state physics. He has also earned several awards for his research, including the R&D 100 Award, presented each year by...

#2179

Panos G. Georgopoulos

#103290

Overall Influence

Panos G. Georgopoulos is a Greek scientist working in the field of Environmental Health and specializing in Mathematical Modeling of Environmental and Biological Systems. He is the architect or the MOdeling ENvironment for Total Risk studies the DOse Response Information and Analysis system , and Prioritization/Ranking of Toxic Exposures with GIS Extension , all under continuing development at the Computational Chemodynamics Laboratory of the Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences Institute .

#2180

Arthur James Boucot

#103293

Overall Influence

1924 - 2017 (93 years)

Arthur James Boucot was an American paleontologist, biostratigrapher, and taphonomist who was an expert in Silurian and Devonian marine invertebrates, particularly brachiopods. Early life Boucot was born in Philadelphia, and raised in an academic family with early exposure to geology and paleontology. He began his studies at the University of Pennsylvania but dropped out in his freshman year to work at RCA. He was drafted into the United States Army during WWII, but enlisted in the United States Army Air Forces as a navigator with the Eighth Air Force on B-24 Bombers, and was awarded the Dist...

#2181

Ernest Lenard Hall

#103447

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (85 years)

Ernest Lenard Hall, PhD, PE, is Professor Emeritus of Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science in the School of Dynamic Systems in the College of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Cincinnati. He was also the Paul E. Geier Professor of Robotics in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Cincinnati. He has also held joint appointments at the University of Cincinnati with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computer Science. He regularly collaborates with faculty and students in other colleges at University of Cincinnati, as well ...

#2182

Dean Lee

#103500

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (54 years)

Dean Lee is an American nuclear theorist, researcher and educator. He is a professor of physics at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams and the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Michigan State University and department head of Theoretical Nuclear Science at FRIB.

#2183

Fritz Luty

#103581

Overall Influence

1928 - 2017 (89 years)

Fritz Luty was an American physicist. He was born in Essen, Germany, and briefly saw action as a teenager in the German Army towards the end of World War II. He then studied physics and was awarded a PhD by the University of Göttingen. After working as an assistant professor in Stuttgart, he moved in 1965 to the US to be a full professor at the University of Utah, where he subsequently spent his whole career.

#2184

Mike Gurnis

#103617

Overall Influence

Michael Gurnis is the John E. and Hazel S. Smits Professor of Geophysics at the California Institute of Technology. Gurnis served as director of the Computational Infrastructure for Geodynamics , an NSF-funded institute operated by Caltech which supports and promotes Earth science by developing and maintaining open-source software for computational geophysics and related fields.

#2185

Steven Allan Boggs

#103673

Overall Influence

1946 - 2018 (72 years)

Steven Allan Boggs was an American physicist in the field of dielectrics and electrical insulation. He was a researcher in industry before becoming a tenured research professor at University of Connecticut from 1993 to 2013.

#2186

Albert Hudspeth

#103675

Overall Influence

#2187

Robert Anthony Ainsworth

#103680

Overall Influence

Robert Anthony Ainsworth FRS FREng is a British material scientist, and Assessment Technology Group Head, at British Energy Generation. He is Visiting Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Imperial College, London. In 2006, he won the James Clayton Prize, from IMechE.

#2188

David M. Strom

#103681

Overall Influence

David M. Strom is an experimental high energy particle physicist on the faculty of the University of Oregon. Early life and education Strom was born in Montana in 1957, the son of Kathryn Jean and Herbert Edward Strom. He was awarded a B.A. in Physics and Mathematics in 1980 at St. Olaf College. He earned a Ph.D. in Physics in 1986 at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, with his dissertation, Measurement of the D0 lifetime, advised by Sau Lan Wu.

#2189

James H. Dieterich

#103743

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (83 years)

James H. Dieterich is an American geophysics professor emeritus at University of California, Riverside . Early life and education Born in Seattle, Washington, Dieterich studied geology at the University of Washington before going on to graduate work at Yale University. He earned his Ph.D in 1968. His doctoral thesis discussed the "Sequence and mechanics of folding in the area of New Haven, Westport, and Naugatuck, Connecticut." He then went to work for the USGS.

#2190

Thea D. Hodge

#103751

Overall Influence

1922 - 2008 (86 years)

Thea Drell Hodge was a member of the Association for Computing Machinery and a cofounder of the Minneapolis chapter of the Association for Women in Computing. Hodge was a pioneer for women in computer science and mentored many women in the field.

#2191

Alyson Brooks

#103868

Overall Influence

Alyson Brooks is an American theoretical astrophysicist and professor at Rutgers University. She uses large-scale simulations to determine how galaxies form. Early life and education Brooks grew up in Minnesota. She was interested in astronomy from a young age, and asked for a telescope as a Christmas gift when she was eight. However, she was discouraged from pursuing a career in science in her teens because of the perception that research would be isolating and unwelcoming to women. She started her undergraduate degree in English in 1996 at Macalester College. After doing well in an astronomy...

#2192

Jarita Holbrook

#103871

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (60 years)

Jarita Charmian Holbrook is an American astronomer and associate professor of physics at the University of the Western Cape where they are principal investigator of the Astronomy & Society group. Holbrook's work examines the relationship between humans and the night sky, and they have produced scientific publications on cultural astronomy, starburst galaxies, and star formation regions.

#2193

Vincent Hayward

#103893

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (70 years)

Vincent Hayward, was a scientist and engineer. His reaserch focus was on touch and haptics. He was a professor at Sorbonne University, Institute of Intelligent Systems and Robotics , where since 2008 he led a team dedicated to the study of tactile perception and the development of haptic devices. In 2020, he was elected to the French Academy of sciences.

#2194

John F. Brady

#103904

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (71 years)

John Francis Brady is an American chemical engineer and the Chevron Professor of Chemical Engineering and Mechanical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology. He is a fluid mechanician and creator of the Stokesian dynamics method for simulating suspensions of spheres and ellipsoids in low Reynolds number flows. He is an elected fellow of the American Physical Society, a fellow of the Society of Rheology, as well as a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

#2195

Hugh E. Montgomery

#103906

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (77 years)

Hugh Elliot Montgomery is a British-born US physicist. He had been appointed director of the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in 2008. From 2002 until 2008, he was associate director for research at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois.

#2196

Chonnettia Jones

Chonnettia Jones

#103922

Overall Influence

Chonnettia Jones is an American geneticist and developmental biologist. She has served as the executive director of Addgene since 2022. Jones was previously the vice president of research at the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research and the director of Insight & Analysis at the Wellcome Trust.

#2197

Nilay Shah

#103988

Overall Influence

#2198

Carl V. Thompson

#104024

Overall Influence

Carl V. Thompson is an American engineer currently the Stavros Salapatas Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Education SB, Materials Science and Engineering, MIT, 1976SM, Applied Physics, Harvard University, 1977PhD, Applied Physics, Harvard University, 1982

#2199

William Arthur Coles

#104034

Overall Influence

William Arthur Coles, from the University of California, San Diego, was awarded the status of Fellow in the American Physical Society, after they were nominated by their Topical Group in Plasma Astrophysics in 2006, for his major contributions to our understanding of the effect of plasma turbulence on radio wave propagation, and the use of radio propagation measurements to infer properties of remote turbulent plasmas in interplanetary space and the interstellar medium.

#2200

Shun Lien Chuang

#104056

Overall Influence

1954 - 2014 (60 years)

Shun Lien Chuang was a Taiwanese-American electrical engineer, optical engineer, and physicist. He was a Fellow of the IEEE, OSA, APS and JSPS, and professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

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