The Most Influential People Across History
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 …
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List of the most influential people
#22651
Magnus Egerstedt
#22662
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Magnus B. Egerstedt is a Swedish-American roboticist who is the Dean of the Henry Samueli School of Engineering at the University of California, Irvine. He was formerly the Steve C. Chaddick School Chair and Professor at the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology.
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Christian Reiher
#22663
Overall Influence
1984 - Present (42 years)
Christian Reiher is a German mathematician. He is the fifth most successful participant in the history of the International Mathematical Olympiad, having won four gold medals in the years 2000 to 2003 and a bronze medal in 1999.
Go to Profile#22653
C. George Sandulescu
#22664
Overall Influence
1933 - 2018 (85 years)
Constantin George Sandulescu was a Joyceanan scholar, but in the first place, he was a linguist with twelve years' experience in the Department of Theoretical Linguistics of the University of Stockholm in the 1970s and 1980s, specializing in Discourse Analysis. In that capacity he read a dozen or so papers at various international congresses .
Go to Profile#22654
Karl Klare
#22665
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Karl E. Klare is a Matthews Distinguished University Professor of labor and employment law and legal theory at Northeastern University School of Law in Boston, Massachusetts, and the current coordinator of the International Network on Transformative Employment and Labor Law . He has written and lectured extensively on labor and employment issues, and is a notable proponent of the critical legal studies movement.
Go to Profile#22655
Ted Belytschko
#22666
Overall Influence
1943 - 2014 (71 years)
Ted Bohdan Belytschko was an American mechanical engineer. He was Walter P. Murphy Professor and McCormick Professor of Computational Mechanics at Northwestern University. He worked in the field of computational solid mechanics and was known for development of methods like element-free Galerkin method and the Extended finite element method.
Go to Profile#22656
Davey Johnson
#22667
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
David Allen Johnson is an American former professional baseball player and manager. He played as a second baseman from through , most notably as a member of the Baltimore Orioles dynasty that won four American League pennants and two World Series championships between 1966 and 1971. Johnson played in Major League Baseball from 1965 to 1975, then played for two seasons in the Nippon Professional Baseball league before returning to play in Major League Baseball with the Philadelphia Phillies and Chicago Cubs from 1977 to 1978. A three-time Rawlings Gold Glove Award winner, he was selected to f...
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Richard H. Schwartz
#22668
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Richard H. Schwartz is a professor emeritus of mathematics at the College of Staten Island; president emeritus of the Jewish Vegetarians of North America ; and co-founder and coordinator of the Society of Ethical and Religious Vegetarians . He is best known as a Jewish vegetarian activist and advocate for animal rights in the United States and Israel.
Go to Profile#22658
Mary Lee Settle
#22669
Overall Influence
1918 - 2005 (87 years)
Mary Lee Settle was an American writer. She won the 1978 National Book Award for her novel Blood Tie. She was a founder of the annual PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. "Settle has gone so unnoticed by the academic community that the most recurrent subject among those few who have written about her is the fact that she has gone so unnoticed." Hurting Settle's reputation is that she does not fit clearly into any type of writer, and wrote on a wide variety of fields; this detracts from a writer's authority.
Go to Profile#22659
Peter Stoica
#22670
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Peter Stoica is a researcher and educator in the field of signal processing and its applications to radar/sonar, communications and bio-medicine. He is a professor of Signals and Systems Modeling at Uppsala University in Sweden, and a Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, the United States National Academy of Engineering , the Romanian Academy , the European Academy of Sciences, and the Royal Society of Sciences. He is also a Fellow of IEEE, EURASIP, IETI, and the Royal Statistical Society.
Go to Profile#22660
Gerd B. Müller
#22671
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Gerd B. Müller is an Austrian biologist who is emeritus professor at the University of Vienna where he was the head of the Department of Theoretical Biology in the Center for Organismal Systems Biology. His research interests focus on vertebrate limb development, evolutionary novelties, evo-devo theory, and the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis. He is also concerned with the development of 3D based imaging tools in developmental biology.
Go to Profile#22661
Saul Levmore
#22672
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Saul Levmore is the William B. Graham Distinguished Service Professor of Law, and former Dean of the University of Chicago Law School. Early life Saul Levmore was born in 1953 in New York City. In 1973, he earned a B.A. from Columbia University, where William Vickrey supervised his thesis. He earned a Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University in 1978; and a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1980. While at Yale, he taught a popular introductory economics course nicknamed "Laughs and Graphs".
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Mary Lee Jensvold
#22673
Overall Influence
Mary Lee Jensvold is a senior lecturer at Central Washington University. She was the Director of the Chimpanzee and Human Communication Institute located on the campus of Central Washington University. CHCI was the home of the chimpanzee Washoe and four other chimpanzees who use the signs of American Sign Language to communicate with one another and their human caregivers.
Go to Profile#22663
Otto Depenheuer
#22674
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Otto Depenheuer is a German law professor and organist. Depenheuer studied law in Bonn, where he attained his doctorate in 1985 and his habilitation in 1992. After teaching law in Münster and Halle/Saale, Depenheuer was appointed to the chair for public law and philosophy of law at the University of Mannheim in 1993. In 1999, he assumed the chair for constitutional law, public law and philosophy of law at the University of Cologne.
Go to Profile#22664
Gertruda Uścińska
#22675
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Gertruda Uścińska is a Polish lawyer and political scientist. She is a Professor of Social Sciences at The University of Warsaw and the Polish Institute of Labor and Social Affairs in Warsaw . Since 2016, Uścińska has been the President of Poland's Social Insurance Institution, which is the Polish state organization responsible for social insurance. She has also been an elected Chairwoman at the International Social Security Association.
Go to Profile#22665
Nate Thurmond
#22676
Overall Influence
1941 - 2016 (75 years)
Nathaniel Thurmond was an American basketball player who spent the majority of his 14-year career in the National Basketball Association with the Golden State Warriors franchise. He played the center and power forward positions. Thurmond was a seven-time All-Star and the first player in NBA history to record an official quadruple-double. In 1965, he grabbed 42 rebounds in a game; only Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell recorded more rebounds in an NBA game. Thurmond was named a member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1985, one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History, and ...
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Andrew Louth
#22677
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Andrew Louth is an English theologian. He is an emeritus professor of patristic and Byzantine studies in the Department of Theology and Religion of Durham University. Louth has been at Durham University since 1996. Previously he taught at the University of Oxford and at Goldsmiths' College in Byzantine and early medieval history. He is a fellow of the British Academy and was a member of the British Academy Council from 2011 to 2014. He was President of the Ecclesiastical History Society .
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Gopal Krishna Sarangi
#22678
Overall Influence
Gopal Krishna Sarangi is an Indian economist specializing in energy economics, climate change, energy regulations, energy access, etc. He is at present an Assistant Professor at Department of Policy Studies, Teri University.
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Rosalynn Carter
#22679
Overall Influence
1927 - Present (99 years)
Eleanor Rosalynn Carter was an American writer, activist and humanitarian who served as the first lady of the United States from 1977 to 1981, as the wife of President Jimmy Carter. Throughout her decades of public service, she was perhaps best known for being a leading advocate for women's rights and mental health.
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Stewart Clegg
#22680
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Stewart Clegg is a British-born Australian sociologist and organizational theorist, and a professor at the School of Project Management, University of Sydney. Prior to joining the University of Sydney he was Distinguished Professor of Management and Organization Studies at the University of Technology Sydney.
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Karen Weaver
#22681
Overall Influence
Karen Weaver is an American psychologist and politician who was the mayor of Flint, Michigan, from 2015 to 2019. She was the first female mayor of the city and the 5th African-American to hold the office.
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Roberto Alomar
#22682
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Roberto Alomar Velázquez is a Puerto Rican former second baseman who played in Major League Baseball for sixteen seasons, primarily with the Toronto Blue Jays. He is regarded as one of the greatest second basemen and all-around players. During his career, the 12-time All-Star won more Gold Glove Awards than any other second baseman in baseball history, in addition to winning four Silver Slugger Awards for his hitting. Among second basemen, he ranks third in games played , fifth in stolen bases , sixth in plate appearances , seventh in doubles and assists , and eighth in hits , runs , at-batss , and double plays turned .
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Hugh Lloyd-Jones
#22683
Overall Influence
1922 - 2009 (87 years)
Sir Peter Hugh Jefferd Lloyd-Jones FBA was a British classical scholar and Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Oxford. Early life and education Lloyd-Jones was educated at Westminster School where he developed an interest in Modern History before being converted to Classics by his Headmaster, J. T. Christie. He pursued undergraduate and postgraduate studies at Christ Church, Oxford, but his studies were interrupted by the Second World War. In February 1942, he was one of a group consisting mostly of classicists from Oxford and Cambridge who were assigned to study Japanese at the secret Bedford Japanese School run by Captain Oswald Tuck RN.
Go to Profile#22673
Robert Matthews
#22684
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Robert A.J. Matthews , is a British physicist and science writer. After graduating in physics at Corpus Christi College, Oxford University, in 1981, Matthews took up a dual career in science writing and academic research. He is currently science consultant and columnist for the science magazine BBC Focus, a freelance columnist for The National in Abu Dhabi and Visiting Professor in the Department of Mathematics, Aston University. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society, a Chartered Physicist and a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Go to Profile#22674
Hans Zantema
#22685
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Hans Zantema is a Dutch mathematician and computer scientist, and professor at Radboud University in Nijmegen, known for his work on termination analysis. Biography Born in Goingarijp, The Netherlands, Zantema received his PhD in algebraic number theory in 1983 at the University of Amsterdam under supervision of Hendrik Lenstra Jr. for the thesis, entitled "Integer Valued Polynomials in Algebraic Number Theory."
Go to Profile#22675
Henry F. Schaefer III
#22686
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Henry Frederick "Fritz" Schaefer III is a computational and theoretical chemist. He is one of the most highly cited chemists in the world, with a Thomson Reuters H-Index of 121 as of 2020. He is the Graham Perdue Professor of Chemistry and Director of the Center for Computational Chemistry at the University of Georgia. Before becoming professor at Georgia he was professor at University of California, Berkeley and in 2004, he became Professor of Chemistry Emeritus, at UC Berkeley
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Xihong Lin
#22687
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Xihong Lin is a Chinese–American statistician known for her contributions to mixed models, nonparametric and semiparametric regression, and statistical genetics and genomics. , she is the Henry Pickering Walcott Professor and Chair of the Department of Biostatistics at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Coordinating Director of the Program in Quantitative Genomics.
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Geo Widengren
#22688
Overall Influence
1907 - 1996 (89 years)
Geo Widengren was a Swedish historian of religions, professor of history of religions at Uppsala University, orientalist and Iranist. Widengren wrote a series of works on Iranian religions , Islam, Judaism, Gnosticism, etc. His most popular works include Die Religion Irans, published in 1965 .
Go to Profile#22678
Prasanta Pattanaik
#22689
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Prasanta Kumar Pattanaik , is an Indian-American emeritus professor at the Department of Economics at the University of California. He is a Fellow of the Econometric Society. Along with Amartya Sen and Kenneth Arrow, Pattanaik is an advisory editor for the journal Social Choice and Welfare.
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Chen Wei-jao
#22690
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Chen Wei-jao is a Taiwanese surgeon and academic administrator. Early life and career Chen was born in Taichū Prefecture on 15 November 1939. He studied medicine at National Taiwan University and completed his residency at National Taiwan University Hospital. He became a lecturer at NTU and continued postgraduate study. Chen earned a DMS in 1973 at Tohoku University in Japan before completing a master's in public health at Johns Hopkins University in 1989. Chen was the lead surgeon in a groundbreaking September 1979 operation to separate conjoined twins. The twins were born with three legs between them and joined at the hip.
Go to Profile#22680
Damiano Brigo
#22691
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Damiano Brigo is a mathematician known for research in mathematical finance, filtering theory, stochastic analysis with differential geometry, probability theory and statistics, authoring more than 130 research publications and three monographs. From 2012 he serves as full professor with a chair in mathematical finance at the Department of Mathematics of Imperial College London, where he headed the Mathematical Finance group in 2012–2019. He is also a well known quantitative finance researcher, manager and advisor in the industry. His research has been cited and published also in mainstream i...
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Conchita Martínez
#22692
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Conchita Martínez Bernat is a Spanish former professional tennis player. She was the first Spaniard to win the women's singles title at Wimbledon, doing so in 1994. Martínez also was the runner-up at the 1998 Australian Open and the 2000 French Open. She reached a career-high ranking of world No. 2 in October 1995, and was in the year-end top 10 for nine years. Martínez won 33 singles and 13 doubles titles during her 18-year career, as well as three Olympic medals. She was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2020.
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Naomi Zack
#22693
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Naomi Zack is a professor of philosophy at Lehman College, City University of New York , having formerly been a professor at the University of Albany and the University of Oregon. She has written thirteen books and three textbooks, and she has edited or co-edited five anthologies, in addition to publishing a large number of papers and book chapters, particularly in areas having to deal with race, feminism, and natural disasters. Zack has taken on a number of professional roles related to the representation of women and other under-represented groups in philosophy. Zack is also a member of the ...
Go to Profile#22683
David Sankoff
#22694
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
David Sankoff is a Canadian mathematician, bioinformatician, computer scientist and linguist. He holds the Canada Research Chair in Mathematical Genomics in the Mathematics and Statistics Department at the University of Ottawa, and is cross-appointed to the Biology Department and the School of Information Technology and Engineering. He was founding editor of the scientific journal Language Variation and Change and serves on the editorial boards of a number of bioinformatics, computational biology and linguistics journals. Sankoff is best known for his pioneering contributions in computational linguistics and computational genomics.
Go to Profile#22684
Sócrates Rizzo
#22695
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Sócrates Cuauhtémoc Rizzo García is a Mexican politician affiliated with the Institutional Revolutionary Party . He is a former federal Congressman , mayor of Monterrey and former governor of Nuevo León .
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Dick Butkus
#22696
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Richard Marvin Butkus was an American football linebacker, sports commentator, and actor. He played football for the Chicago Bears of the National Football League from 1965 to 1973. He was invited to eight Pro Bowls in nine seasons, named a first-team All-Pro six times, and was twice recognized by his peers as the NFL's Defensive Player of the Year. Butkus was renowned as a fierce tackler and for the relentless effort with which he played. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest and most intimidating linebackers in professional football history.
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François Bruhat
#22697
Overall Influence
1929 - 2007 (78 years)
François Georges René Bruhat was a French mathematician who worked on algebraic groups. The Bruhat order of a Weyl group, the Bruhat decomposition, and the Schwartz–Bruhat functions are named after him.
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Dick Trickle
#22698
Overall Influence
1941 - 2013 (72 years)
Richard Leroy Trickle was an American race car driver. He raced for decades around the short tracks of Wisconsin, winning many championships along the way. Trickle competed in the ASA, ARTGO, ARCA, All Pro, IMCA, NASCAR, and USAC.
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Goverdhan Mehta
#22699
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Goverdhan Mehta FNA, FASc, FTWAS, FRS, FRSC is an Indian researcher and scientist. Career Mehta received his BSc and MSc from the BITS Pilani and PhD from Pune University. His post-doctoral research was at the Michigan State University under Prof. Don Farnum and at the Ohio State University under Prof. Paul G. Gassman. He joined IIT Kanpur in 1969 and remained there until 1977. From 1977 to 1998, he was Professor of Chemistry at the University of Hyderabad and from 1998 to 2010, he was a Professor at the Indian Institute of Science Bangalore. Since 2010, he is University Distinguished Professor and holds the Dr.
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Sylvie Benzoni
#22700
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Sylvie Benzoni-Gavage is a French mathematician known for her research in partial differential equations, fluid dynamics, traffic flow, shock waves, and phase transitions. In 2017 she was named as the director of the Institut Henri Poincaré.
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Ed Dorn
#22701
Overall Influence
1929 - 1999 (70 years)
Edward Merton Dorn was an American poet and teacher often associated with the Black Mountain poets. His most famous work is Gunslinger. Overview Dorn was born in Villa Grove, Illinois. He grew up in rural poverty during the Great Depression. He attended a one-room schoolhouse for his first eight grades. He later studied at the University of Illinois and at Black Mountain College . At Black Mountain he came into contact with Charles Olson, who greatly influenced his literary worldview and his sense of himself as poet.
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Lester Spence
#22702
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Lester K. Spence , Professor of Political Science and Africana studies at Johns Hopkins University is known for his academic critiques of neoliberalism and his media commentary and research on race, urban politics, and police violence. Previously, he was an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Washington University in St. Louis. Spence's writings on race and politics appear regularly in publications such as Jacobin, The Chronicle of Higher Education, DissentNPR, New York Times, Baltimore City Paper, among others. Spence also appeared regularly on C-SPAN, The Marc Steiner Show, among o...
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Kenneth M. Watson
#22703
Overall Influence
1921 - Present (105 years)
Kenneth Marshall Watson was an American theoretical physicist and physical oceanographer. Life and career Watson graduated in 1943 with BS in electrical engineering from Iowa State College. From 1943 to 1946 he was a researcher at the United States Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. During his work for the U.S. Navy he went to night school at George Washington University. He graduated from the University of Iowa with Ph.D. in 1948 with thesis The polarizability of the meson-charge cloud of a neutron in an external electrostatic field. He was from 1948 to 1949 an Atomic Energy Commi...
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Nicholas Cook
#22704
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Nicholas Cook, is a British musicologist and writer born in Athens, Greece. From 2009 to 2017, he was the 1684 Professor of Music at the University of Cambridge, where he is a Fellow of Darwin College. Previously, he was professorial research fellow at Royal Holloway, University of London, where he directed the Arts and Humanities Research Council Research Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music . He has also taught at the University of Hong Kong, University of Sydney, and University of Southampton, where he served as dean of arts.
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Miloš Zeman
#22705
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (82 years)
Miloš Zeman is a Czech politician who served as the third president of the Czech Republic and eleventh president since the Czechoslovak declaration of independence from 2013 to 2023. He also previously served as the prime minister of the Czech Republic from 1998 to 2002. As leader of the Czech Social Democratic Party during the 1990s, he is credited with the revival of the party into one of the country's major political forces. Zeman briefly served as the President of the Chamber of Deputies from 1996 to 1998.
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Mohammad Modarres
#22706
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Mohammad Modarres is an Iranian American scientist and educator in the fields of nuclear and reliability engineering. He is a Distinguished Scholar-Teacher and Nicole Y. Kim Eminent Professor of the University of Maryland. Within the University of Maryland A. James Clark School of Engineering, Modarres founded world's first graduate curriculum in reliability engineering, which has now become a leading academic program both nationally and internationally with over 400 Master's and PhD graduates. As the Director of the UMD Center for Risk and Reliability, Modarres serves as international exper...
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Carl E. Misch
#22707
Overall Influence
1947 - 2017 (70 years)
Carl E. Misch was an American prosthodontist recognized internationally for his clinical and academic contributions to the field of implant dentistry. Biography Misch graduated magna cum laude in 1973 from the University of Detroit Dental School. He received his prosthodontic certificate, implantology certificate and Master's degree from the University of Pittsburgh School of Dental Medicine. The University of Yeditepe in Istanbul, Turkey and Carol Davila University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Bucharest, Romania each awarded Dr. Misch a Ph.D. . He holds several other post-graduate honors incl...
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Robert B. Talisse
#22708
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Robert B. Talisse is an American philosopher and political theorist. He is currently Professor of Philosophy and Chair of the Philosophy Department at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, where he is also a Professor of Political Science. Talisse is a former editor of the academic journal Public Affairs Quarterly, and a regular contributor to the blog 3 Quarks Daily, where he posts a monthly column with his frequent co-author and fellow Vanderbilt philosopher Scott Aikin. He earned his PhD in Philosophy from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York in 2001. His princi...
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Mahmoud Nili Ahmadabadi
#22709
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Mahmoud Nili Ahmadabadi is a professor of metallurgy at the University of Tehran, who served as the President of University of Tehran from 2014 to 2021. He is also former head of the Center for Excellence for Higher Performance Material at the University of Tehran.In October 2021, the then president of the University of Tehran, Mahmoud Nili Ahmadabadi, wrote a letter to Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Eje'i, the head of the Islamic Republic's judiciary, demanding the release of Kasra Nouri, a student prisoner, and a day later the president of the University of Tehran himself was fired.
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Jackie Huggins
#22710
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Jacqueline Gail "Jackie" Huggins is an Aboriginal Australian author, historian, academic and advocate for the rights of Indigenous Australians. She is a Bidjara/Pitjara, Birri Gubba and Juru woman from Queensland.
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Scott Pace
#22711
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Scott Norman Pace currently serves as Director of the Space Policy Institute, Director of the Institute for International Science and Technology Policy and Director of the MA International Science and Technology Policy program at the George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs. He served as the Executive Secretary of the National Space Council from July 2017 to January 2021, when he resigned. Pace was formerly the Director of the Space Policy Institute at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, where he was also a Professor of th...
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