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).

Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …

See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.

Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people

#2201

Bradford C. Berk

#104080

Overall Influence

#2202

Robert W. Haley

#104101

Overall Influence

#2203

Clement W. H. Lam

#104170

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (25 years)

Clement Wing Hong Lam is a Canadian mathematician, specializing in combinatorics. He is famous for the computer proof, with Larry Thiel and S. Swiercz, of the nonexistence of a finite projective plane of order 10.

#2204

Sonya T. Smith

#104177

Overall Influence

Sonya Teresa Smith is an American mechanical engineer whose research involves computational fluid dynamics and thermal management of electronics for air and space vehicles. She is a professor at Howard University, the director of the atmospheric sciences program at Howard University, and the 2020–2021 president of Sigma Xi.

#2205

Walter J Koch

#104204

Overall Influence

#2206

Elizabeth B. Dussan V.

#104212

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (79 years)

Elizabeth B. Dussan V. is an American applied mathematician, condensed matter physicist, and chemical engineer. Her research involves fluid dynamics, and she is known for her work on wetting, porous media, and fluid-fluid interfaces.

#2207

Stephen Yurkovich

#104238

Overall Influence

Stephen Yurkovich is a Fellow of the IEEE, and holds the Louis Beecherl Jr. Distinguished Chair in Engineering at the University of Texas at Dallas, United States, where he is also Program Head of Systems Engineering. Until early 2011, he held a joint appointment as Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering, at The Ohio State University, where he was also Director of the Honda-OSU Partnership Program in which he oversaw endowments of over $40M. Also at Ohio State, he served as Acting Director of the Center for Automotive Research in 2007.

#2208

Christopher Earls Brennen

#104243

Overall Influence

#2209

John Johnson

#104303

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (48 years)

John Asher Johnson is an American astrophysicist and professor of astronomy at Harvard. He is the first tenured African-American physical science professor in the history of the university. Johnson is well known for discovering three of the first known planets smaller than the Earth outside of the solar system, including the first Mars-sized exoplanet.

#2210

Sumit Ranjan Das

#104304

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (70 years)

Sumit Ranjan Das is a US-based Indian high energy physicist and a professor at the University of Kentucky. Known for his research on string theory, Das is an elected fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences. The Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, one of the highest Indian science awards, for his contributions to physical sciences in 1998.

#2211

Ann E. Hagerman

#104393

Overall Influence

Ann E. Hagerman is an American chemist. She is a professor of biochemistry at Miami University and an expert on Tannin chemistry. In 1998, she published High Molecular Weight Plant Polyphenolics as Biological Antioxidants, one of the most highly cited papers in the field.

#2212

John R. Kirtley

John R. Kirtley

#104468

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (76 years)

John Robert Kirtley is an American condensed matter physicist and a consulting professor at the Center for Probing the Nanoscale in the department of applied physics at Stanford University. He shared the 1998 Oliver E. Buckley Prize of the American Physical Society, and is a Fellow of both the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences.

#2213

Tom Murphy

#104574

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (25 years)

Tom Murphy is a professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego. He is the project investigator for the Apache Point Observatory Lunar Laser-ranging Operation Project. Professor Murphy completed his Ph.D. in astrophysics at the California Institute of Technology after which he completed a postdoc at the University of Washington - Seattle before becoming a professor at the University of California, San Diego. In 2010 his group was responsible for locating the former Soviet Union's Lunokhod 1 rover.

#2214

Jesse D. Bloom

#104736

Overall Influence

Jesse D. Bloom is an American computational virologist and Professor in the Basic Sciences Division, the Public Health Sciences Division, and the Herbold Computational Biology Program, at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center. He is also an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and an Affiliate Professor in the University of Washington departments of Genome Sciences and Microbiology.

#2215

Daniel Cox

#104772

Overall Influence

Daniel L. Cox is an American condensed matter physicist and biophysicist. Cox earned his doctorate from Cornell University in 1985, and was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, San Diego. He began teaching at Ohio State University in 1986 as an assistant professor. He was promoted to an associate professorship in 1990, and became a full professor in 1994. Cox subsequently joined the University of California, Davis in 1996. He is the lead researcher of the Cox Group. Cox was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship in 2004, and elected a fellow of the American Physical Society in 2...

#2216

Robert S. Coleman

#104805

Overall Influence

Robert S. Coleman is an American chemistry professor and researcher. Coleman was a faculty member at both Ohio State University and the University of South Carolina. At Ohio State, he was on the faculty in the Department of Chemistry from 1996 to 2012, having moved to Ohio State as an associate professor from the University of South Carolina. At USC, Coleman taught as assistant professor from 1989 to 1995, and then as associate professor from 1995 to 1996. In 1996, he accepted a faculty position at Ohio State University to teach Organic Chemistry, where he was an associate professor from 1996 until 2000.

#2217

John Beverley Oke

#104911

Overall Influence

1928 - 2004 (76 years)

John Beverley Oke was an astronomer and professor of astronomy at Caltech. He worked in astronomical photometry and spectroscopy and is well known for creating instruments for the detection and measurement of cosmic phenomena. His instruments were used on the Hale telescope at Mt. Palomar, California and the Keck telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. "He was one of the first really serious and really excellent astronomer-instrumentalists," says James E. Gunn, Eugene Higgins Professor of Astronomy at Princeton University Observatory, "and he and the instruments he designed and built were very la...

#2218

Robert J Wood

#104944

Overall Influence

#2219

Robert F. Landel

#104949

Overall Influence

#2220

Catherine Rae

#105080

Overall Influence

Catherine Mary Fiona Rae is a Professor of Superalloys in the Department of Materials at the University of Cambridge. Rae is the Director of the Rolls-Royce UTC in Cambridge. She is known for her expertise in electron microscopy and the behaviour of materials in aerospace applications.

#2221

Warren E. Pickett

#105130

Overall Influence

#2222

Brian Hooker

#105139

Overall Influence

Brian S. Hooker is a biologist and chemist at Simpson University. He is known for promoting the false claim that vaccines cause autism. Education In 1985, Hooker earned his Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering, from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, California. He earned his master's of science degree in 1988 and his doctorate in 1990, both in chemical engineering, from Washington State University, in Pullman, Washington.

#2223

Dwaine O. Cowan

#105143

Overall Influence

1935 - 2006 (71 years)

Dwaine O. Cowan was an American chemist. He was a professor of chemistry at Johns Hopkins University. He is best known for his pioneering work in the field of organic conductors. His other research interests included organometallic chemistry, organic photochemistry, organic chemistry, metallocenes and the synthesis of heterocyclic compounds containing sulfur, selenium, and tellurium.

#2224

Michelle Wang

#105239

Overall Influence

Michelle Dong Wang is a Chinese-American physicist who is the James Gilbert White Distinguished Professor of the Physical Sciences at Cornell University. She is an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Her research considers biomolecular motors and single molecule optical trapping techniques. She was appointed Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2009.

#2225

Jon T. Hougen

#105276

Overall Influence

1936 - 2019 (83 years)

Jon Torger Hougen was an American spectroscopist. Education and career Hougen finished his undergraduate degree at the University of Wisconsin in 1956. He obtained his Master's and doctoral degrees at Harvard University. He worked at Harvard University under the research direction of William Moffitt and William Klemperer. He started his career in 1960 as a Postdoctorate Fellow at the National Research Council of Canada in the Molecular Spectroscopy group of Gerhard Herzberg. He joined the staff at NRC in 1962 and supervised Postdoctorate Fellows J.K.G.Watson and Philip Bunker. In 1967 he joined the National Bureau of Standards .

#2226

Jianping Yao

#105341

Overall Influence

#2227

Tamas Gombosi

#105358

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (78 years)

Tamas I. Gombosi is a Hungarian space plasma physicist. He is the Konstantin I. Gringauz Distinguished University Professor of Space Science and Rollin M. Gerstacker Professor of Engineering at the University of Michigan.

#2228

Thorne Lay

#105390

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (69 years)

Thorne Lay is an American seismologist. He was born in Casper, Wyoming in 1956, and raised in El Paso, Texas. He is a professor of earth and planetary sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

#2229

Dennis G. Peters

Dennis G. Peters

#105408

Overall Influence

1937 - 2020 (83 years)

Dennis Gail Peters was an American analytical chemist who specialized in electrochemistry and was named the Herman T. Briscoe Professor at Indiana University in 1975. Peters led his own research group at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana until his death in 2020. Peters' research focused on the electrochemical behavior of halogenated organic compounds, more recently moving to focus on transition metal catalysts in regards to the oxidation and reduction of organic species. He authored or co-authored over 210 publications and 5 analytical chemistry textbooks.

#2230

Eugene Rosenberg

#105446

Overall Influence

#2231

Josef Parnas

#105515

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (75 years)

Josef Parnas is a Danish psychiatrist. He is Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Copenhagen, as well as a co-founder and senior researcher at the Center for Subjectivity Research. He worked on the creation of the Examination of Anomalous Self-Experience scale, which has played an important role in enabling empirical study of self-disorders in schizophrenia spectrum disorders.

#2232

Peter Gouras

#105570

Overall Influence

#2233

Bernice Durand

#105572

Overall Influence

1942 - 2022 (80 years)

Bernice Black Durand was an American particle physicist and emeritus Professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She was also the emeritus Vice Provost for Diversity and Climate. Early life and education Durand was born in Clarion, Iowa. Her father studied mechanical engineering at Iowa State University and Harvard University, and joined the United States Army Corps of Engineers. She grew up in Ames and attended Radcliffe College, but never finished her course. She eventually completed her bachelor's degree from Iowa State University in 1965. She earned her PhD with a dissertation titled A point and local position operator, in 1971.

#2234

Michael J. Belton

#105649

Overall Influence

1934 - 2018 (84 years)

Michael J. S. Belton was President of Belton Space Exploration Initiatives and Emeritus Astronomer at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona. Belton served as the Chair of the 2002 Planetary Science Decadal Survey guiding NASA and other US Government Agencies plans for solar system exploration. Belton studied first at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and earned his PhD at the University of California at Berkeley for his doctoral thesis on "The Interaction of Type II Comet Tails with the Interplanetary Medium".

#2235

Huseyin Arslan

#105785

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (57 years)

Huseyin Arslan from the University of South Florida Tampa, Florida, USA was named Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2016 for contributions to spectrum sensing in cognitive radio networks. Arslan was among the 169 academic inventors identified by the US National Academy of Inventors in 2022.

#2236

Leslie M. Smith

#105850

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (64 years)

Leslie Morgan Smith is an American applied mathematician, mechanical engineer, and engineering physicist whose research focuses on fluid dynamics and turbulence. She is a professor of mathematics and of engineering physics at the University of Wisconsin.

#2237

Derek Elsworth

#105960

Overall Influence

#2238

Christopher K. W. Tam

#105968

Overall Influence

Christopher K. W. Tam is an American mathematician, currently the Robert O. Lawton Distinguished Professor at Florida State University.

#2239

Henry N Ginsberg

#105981

Overall Influence

#2240

Todd Brun

#105987

Overall Influence

Todd A. Brun is an American engineer and physicist, currently a professor at University of Southern California. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society for "contributions to quantum theory and quantum information science, including decoherence and continuous quantum measurement, quantum computation, and quantum error correction." He is a coinventor of the method of entanglement-assisted quantum error correction, which allows for the use of shared entanglement in quantum error correction and for producing a quantum error correction code from an arbitrary classical error correction code.

#2241

Jennifer Wilcox

Jennifer Wilcox

#106053

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (51 years)

Jennifer Wilcox is an American chemical engineer and an expert carbon capture and storage and removal of CO2 from the atmosphere. She is the Presidential Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering and Energy Policy at University of Pennsylvania and a former James H. Manning Chaired Professor of Chemical Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Wilcox conducts research focused on minimizing the environmental and climate impacts of our dependence on fossil fuels. In January 2021, she became acting Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy and Carbon Management and Principal Deputy Assist...

#2242

Joel D. Blum

#106123

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (65 years)

Joel D. Blum is a scientist who specializes in isotope geochemistry and environmental geochemistry. He is currently a professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Michigan and an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences. Blum has several named professorships including the John D. MacArthur, Arthur F. Thurnau and Gerald J. Keeler Distinguished Professorship. Blum is a past Co-Editor- in-Chief of Chemical Geology and Elementa, and is the current Editor-in-Chief of the American Chemical Society journal Earth and Space Chemistry.

#2243

Sarah Stewart Johnson

#106184

Overall Influence

Sarah Stewart Johnson is an American biologist, geochemist, astronomer and planetary scientist. She joined Georgetown University in 2014 and is currently the Provost's Distinguished Associate Professor of Biology and the Science, Technology, and International Affairs program in the School of Foreign Service.

#2244

James G. Berryman

#106267

Overall Influence

#2245

Peter Koopman

#106408

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (66 years)

Peter Anthony Koopman is an Australian biologist best known for his role in the discovery and study of the mammalian Y-chromosomal sex-determining gene, Sry. Early life and education Peter Anthony Koopman was born on 3 December 1959 in Geelong, Victoria, to Dutch immigrant parents, and raised in the coastal town of Torquay, Victoria. He attended Oberon High School in Geelong, where he was School Captain. He studied science at the University of Melbourne from 1977 to 1979, majoring in genetics, and was a resident of Janet Clarke Hall. He undertook BSc Honours research at the Birth Defects Res...

#2246

Elburt F. Osborn

#106490

Overall Influence

1911 - 1998 (87 years)

Elburt Franklin Osborn was an American geochemist and educator. He served as the 13th director of the U.S. Bureau of Mines. Early life Elburt Franklin Osborn was born on August 13, 1911, in Kishwaukee, Illinois to Anna and William Franklin Osborn. Osborn graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in geology from DePauw University in 1932. He received a Master of Science in petrology from Northwestern University in 1934 and a PhD in petrology from the California Institute of Technology in 1938.

#2247

Harindra Joseph S. Fernando

#106562

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (70 years)

Harindra Joseph S. Fernando is the Wayne and Diana Murdy Family Endowed Professor of Engineering and Geosciences at University of Notre Dame. He holds joint appointments in the Departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering & Earth Sciences and Aerospace & Mechanical Engineering. He also holds a concurrent appointment with the Department of Applied and Computational Mathematics and Statistics.

#2248

David Israel Schuster

#106664

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (90 years)

David Israel Schuster is a chemist who is currently a professor emeritus at New York University. His research program focused on organic photochemistry and later on fullerenes. Early life and education Schuster was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1935 and raised in Far Rockaway. He attended Columbia University as an undergraduate and received his bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1956. He then moved to the California Institute of Technology, from which he received his Ph.D. in 1961 under the mentorship of John D. Roberts. During Schuster's time in the Roberts laboratory, the group began experimenting with some of the first applications of NMR spectroscopy to organic chemistry.

#2249

Janet Hering

#106673

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (67 years)

Janet Gordon Hering is the former Director of the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology and Professor emeritus of Biogeochemistry at ETH Zurich and EPFL . She works on the biogeochemical cycling of trace elements in water and the management of water infrastructure.

#2250

Kimmen Sjölander

#106746

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (70 years)

Kimmen Sjölander is professor emerita at the University of California, Berkeley in the Department of Bioengineering. She is well known for her work on protein sequence analysis. Biography Sjölander did both her undergraduate and graduate work at the University of California, Santa Cruz in the Department of Computer Science, earning a bachelor's degree in 1993 and a PhD in 1997 under the supervision of David Haussler. She was the chief scientist in the Molecular Applications Group from 1997-1999 and then principal scientist in Protein Informatics at Celera Genomics from 1999-2001, where she was a member of the team who assembled and annotated the Human Genome.

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions