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 …

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List of the most influential people

#23101

Ludmilla Jordanova

#23112

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Ludmilla Jane Jordanova is a British historian and academic. She is Professor of Visual Culture in the Department of History at Durham University. Jordanova was born to a Bulgarian father and English mother. Educated at Oxford High School and New Hall, Cambridge, Professor Jordanova has taught at the universities of Oxford, Essex, York, East Anglia, Cambridge and King's College London. Previously she held the position of Director of the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities , University of Cambridge and was Professor of Visual Arts at the University of East Anglia....

#23102

Leon Radzinowicz

#23113

Overall Influence

1906 - 1999 (93 years)

Sir Leon Radzinowicz, was a criminologist and academic. He was the founding director of the Institute of Criminology at the Faculty of Law at the University of Cambridge. Early life Radzinowicz was born on 15 August 1906 in Łódź, Congress Poland. He studied law as an undergraduate student at the University of Paris and the University of Geneva. He went on to study for a doctorate at the University of Cracow. During this time, he spent a year studying under Enrico Ferri at the Institute of Criminology in Rome, Italy. Radzinowicz moved to England in 1938, having been granted funding by the Pol...

#23103

Simon Le Bon

#23114

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Simon John Charles Le Bon is an English singer. He is best known as the lead vocalist and lyricist of the new wave band Duran Duran and its offshoot Arcadia. Le Bon has received three Ivor Novello Awards from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors, including the award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music.

#23104

Heinz Bauer

#23115

Overall Influence

1928 - 2002 (74 years)

Heinz Bauer was a German mathematician. Bauer studied at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and received his PhD there in 1953 under the supervision of Otto Haupt and finished his habilitation in 1956, both for work with Otto Haupt. After a short time from 1961 to 1965 as professor at the University of Hamburg he stayed his whole career at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. His research focuses were potential theory, probability theory, and functional analysis.

#23105

Christoph Zielinski

#23116

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Christoph Zielinski is an Austrian physician and cancer researcher. A medical oncologist, Zielinski is Director of the Clinical Division of Oncology and Chairman of the Department of Medicine I and the Comprehensive Cancer Centre at the Medical University of Vienna.

#23106

Paul Moorcraft

#23117

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Paul Leslie Moorcraft is the director of the Centre for Foreign Policy Analysis in London and a visiting professor at Cardiff University's School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies. Biography

#23107

Abdou Diouf

#23118

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (91 years)

Abdou Diouf is a Senegalese politician who was the second President of Senegal, in office from January 1981 to April 2000. Diouf is notable both for coming to power by peaceful succession and leaving willingly after losing the 2000 presidential election to Abdoulaye Wade. He was also the second Secretary-General of the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie from January 2003 to December 2014.

#23108

John Ehle

#23119

Overall Influence

1925 - 2018 (93 years)

John Marsden Ehle, Jr. was an American writer known best for his fiction set in the Appalachian Mountains of the American South. He has been described as "the father of Appalachian literature". Life and career John Ehle was born in Asheville, North Carolina, the oldest of five children of Gladys and John Marsden Ehle, an insurance company division director. His paternal grandparents emigrated from Germany and England.

#23109

Robert Bruce Ware

#23120

Overall Influence

Robert Bruce Ware is Professor of Philosophy at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Ware earned an AB in political science from UC Berkeley, an MA in philosophy from UC San Diego, and a D.Phil. from Oxford University. From 1996 to 2013, Ware conducted field research in North Caucasus and has published extensively on politics, ethnography, and religion of the region in scholarly journals and in the popular media. He has been cited as a leading specialist on Dagestan. His recent research has focused upon the philosophy of mathematics and physics.

#23110

Matthew Kapstein

#23121

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Matthew T. Kapstein is a scholar of Tibetan religions, Buddhism, and the cultural effects of the Chinese occupation of Tibet. He is Numata Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies at the University of Chicago Divinity School, and Director of Tibetan Studies at the École pratique des hautes études.

#23111

Robert L. Saucy

#23122

Overall Influence

1930 - 2015 (85 years)

Robert Lloyd Saucy was an American biblical scholar and professor of systematic theology. Biography Saucy was born in Salem, Oregon, and educated at George Fox College and Westmont College , earning his A.B. in history. He went on to earn both his Th.M. and Th.D. in systematic theology at Dallas Theological Seminary. While completing his graduate studies at Dallas, Saucy served as part-time instructor at the Southern Bible Training Institute, and as part-time pastor at Milligan Bible Church. He was ordained as a minister in the North American Baptist General Conference.

#23112

Dimitri Obolensky

Dimitri Obolensky

#23123

Overall Influence

1918 - 2001 (83 years)

Dimitri Dimitrievich Obolensky was a Russian-British historian who was Professor of Russian and Balkan History at the University of Oxford and the author of various historical works. Biography Prince Dimitri Dimitrievich Obolensky was born in the Russian Soviet Republic on 1 April 1918 in Saint Petersburg, the son of Prince Dimitri Alexandrovich Obolensky and Countess Maria . His family was descended from Rurik, Igor, Svyatoslav, St Vladimir of Kiev, St Michael of Chernigov, and Prince Mikhail Semyonovich Vorontsov: however, as one of his students has written, "he was a sober enough sc...

#23113

Tim Kasser

#23124

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Tim Kasser is an American psychologist and book author known for his work on materialism and well-being. Career Kasser received his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Rochester in 1994, and after one additional year of teaching at Montana State University, he accepted a position at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, where he was a professor of psychology. He retired from Knox in 2019 and was named Emeritus Professor.

#23114

Richard Bonneau

#23125

Overall Influence

Richard Bonneau is an American computational biologist and data scientist whose primary research is in the following areas: learning networks from functional genomics data, predicting and designing protein and peptiodomimetic structure and applying data science to social networks. A professor at New York University, he holds appointments in the department of biology, the Center for Data Science and the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences.

#23115

Johannes Knoops

#23126

Overall Influence

Johannes M. P. Knoops is an American architect, international architectural correspondent, and Professor in the Department of Interior Design at the Fashion Institute of Technology / State University of New York in New York City. Knoops design for a private study in the tradition of a Japanese scholar's study as influenced by origami was written about in New York Magazine and his design for a new wedding chapel atop the New York Municipal Building by Architectural Scholar.

#23116

Sadullah Khan

#23127

Overall Influence

Sadullah Khan, originally from South Africa, was a student leader active in the anti-apartheid struggle. Sheikh Khan has been a public speaker since the age of 12, a public reciter of Quran since age 6, a chanter of melodious odes in praise of the Prophet since 8, and an experienced teacher at colleges and universities in South Africa and the United States; Khan completed studies in law at University of Durban, South Africa, Journalism and Islamic Studies at Al - Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt.

#23117

François Recanati

#23128

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

François Recanati is a French analytic philosopher and research fellow at the College de France, and at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. Many of his works focus on the philosophy of language and mind.

#23118

Bill Roscoe

#23129

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Andrew William Roscoe is a Scottish computer scientist. He was Head of the Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford from 2003 to 2014, and is a Professor of Computer Science. He is also a Fellow of University College, Oxford.

#23119

Tenzin Priyadarshi

Tenzin Priyadarshi

#23130

Overall Influence

Tenzin Priyadarshi is the president and CEO of the Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Early years Priyadarshi was born into a Hindu family in Vaishali district, Bihar, India. He comes from a family of bureaucrats, political leaders, and eminent scholars. He has two sisters, one is an attorney and the other, Shilpa Shukla, is a famed actress in the Indian film industry.

#23120

Beatriz Merino

#23131

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Martha Beatriz Merino Lucero is a Peruvian lawyer, academic and politician who served as the first female Prime Minister of Peru, in 2003. She previously served as Senator and Congresswoman from 1990 until 2000. Following her tenure in Alejandro Toledo's cabinet, Merino was appointed by the Peruvian Congress as the national ombudswoman for Peru, serving from 2005 to 2011, a position officially known as the Public Defender, being the second to hold the position.

#23121

Jacob Milgrom

#23132

Overall Influence

1923 - 2010 (87 years)

Jacob Milgrom was a prominent American Jewish Bible scholar and Conservative rabbi. Milgrom's major contribution to biblical research was in the field of cult and worship. Although he accepted the documentary hypothesis, contrary to the classical bible critics, he traced a direct line of development from the Priestly Code , to the Holiness Code , to the cultic innovations of Ezekiel, to the cultic writings of the Dead Sea sect and finally to Jewish law of the Mishnah and Talmud. Best known for his comprehensive Torah commentaries and work on the Dead Sea Scrolls, he also published extensi...

#23122

Peter Harrison

#23133

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Peter D. Harrison is an Australian Laureate Fellow and director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Queensland. Career Peter Harrison holds a DLitt from the University of Oxford, a PhD from the University of Queensland, and master's degrees from Yale and Oxford. His academic career began at Bond University on Australia's Gold Coast, where for a number of years he was professor of history and philosophy. From 2007 to 2011 he was the Andreas Idreos Professor of Science and Religion at the University of Oxford. During his time at Oxford, he was a fellow...

#23123

Michel Goedert

#23134

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Michel Goedert FRS, FMedSci is a Luxembourgish-British neuroscientist and former Head of Neurobiology, at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology. Goedert was born and raised in Luxembourg. After finishing his medical studies at the University of Basel in 1986, he started working at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology affiliated with the University of Cambridge.

#23124

Paul Viola

#23135

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Paul Viola is a computer vision researcher, and Distinguished Engineer at Microsoft. He is a former MIT professor, and a former vice president of science for Amazon Air. He is best known for his seminal work in facial recognition and machine learning. He is the co-inventor of the Viola–Jones object detection framework along with Michael Jones. He won the Marr Prize in 2003 and the Helmholtz Prize from the International Conference on Computer Vision in 2013. He is the holder of at least 57 patents in the areas of advanced machine learning, web search, data mining, and image processing. He i...

#23125

Susan P. Holmes

#23136

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Susan P. Holmes is an American statistician and professor at Stanford University. She is noted for her work in applying nonparametric multivariate statistics, bootstrapping methods, and data visualization to biology.

#23126

Andrew Salkey

#23137

Overall Influence

1928 - 1995 (67 years)

Andrew Salkey was a Jamaican novelist, poet, children's books writer and journalist of Jamaican and Panamanian origin. He was born in Panama but was raised in Jamaica, moving to Britain in the 1952 to pursue a job in the literary world, combining a job in a South London comprehensive school teaching English with a job working on the door of a West End night club. The 1960s and 1970s saw Salkey working as a broadcaster for the BBC World Service, Caribbean section.

#23127

Tom Holland

#23138

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Thomas Lee Holland is an American filmmaker. He is best known for his work in the horror film genre, penning the 1983 sequel to the classic Alfred Hitchcock film Psycho, directing and co-writing the first entry in the long-running Child's Play franchise, and writing and directing the cult vampire film Fright Night. He also directed the Stephen King adaptations The Langoliers and Thinner. He is a two-time Saturn Award recipient. Holland made the jump into children’s literature in 2018 when he co-wrote How to Scare a Monster with fellow writer Dustin Warburton.

#23128

Joep Lange

#23139

Overall Influence

1954 - 2014 (60 years)

Joseph Marie Albert "Joep" Lange was a Dutch clinical researcher specialising in HIV therapy. He served as the president of the International AIDS Society from 2002 to 2004. He was a passenger on Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, which was shot down on 17 July 2014 over Ukraine.

#23129

Shinzo Watanabe

#23140

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (91 years)

Shinzō Watanabe is a Japanese mathematician, who has made fundamental contributions to probability theory, stochastic processes and stochastic differential equations. He is regarded and revered as one of the fundamental contributors to the modern probability theory and Stochastic calculus. The pioneering book “Stochastic Differential Equations and Diffusion Processes” he wrote with Nobuyuki Ikeda has attracted a lot of researchers into the area and is known as the “Ikeda-Watanabe” for researchers in the field of stochastic analysis. He had been served as the editor of Springer Mathematics.

#23130

Susumu Kuno

#23141

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (93 years)

Susumu Kuno is a Japanese linguist and author. He is Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at Harvard University, where he received his Ph.D. degree in 1964 and spent his entire career. He received his A.B. and A.M. from Tokyo University where he received a thorough grounding in linguistics under the guidance of Shirō Hattori. His postgraduate research focused on the Dravidian languages. It was through S.-Y. Kuroda, an early advocate of Chomskyan approaches to language, that Kuno undertook his first studies in transformational grammar. In 1960 he went to Harvard to work on a machine translation pr...

#23131

Richard Jantz

#23142

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Richard L. Jantz is an American anthropologist. He served as the director of the University of Tennessee Anthropological Research Facility from 1998–2011 and he is the current Professor Emeritus of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. His research focuses primarily on forensic anthropology, skeletal biology, dermatoglyphics, anthropometry, anthropological genetics, and human variation, as well as developing computerized databases in these areas which aid in anthropological research. The author of over a hundred journal articles and other publications, his ...

#23132

Guy Chambers

#23143

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Guy Antony Chambers is an English songwriter, musician and record producer, best known for his work with Robbie Williams. Education Chambers attended Quarry Bank Comprehensive School sixth form in Liverpool. From 18, he studied composition and piano at the Guildhall School of Music, London.

#23133

Krystal Tsosie

#23144

Overall Influence

Dr. Krystal Tsosie is a Navajo geneticist and bioethicist at Arizona State University and activist for Indigenous data sovereignty. She is also an educator and an expert on genetic and social identities. Her advocacy and academic work in ameliorating disparities in genetics through community-based participatory research has been covered by various national news sources, including The New York Times, Nova, The Washington Post, NPR, The Atlantic, Forbes, and The Boston Globe.

#23134

Shaul Ladany

#23145

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (90 years)

Shaul Paul Ladany is an Israeli Holocaust survivor, racewalker and two-time Olympian. He holds the world record in the 50-mile walk , and the Israeli national record in the 50-kilometer walk . He is a former world champion in the 100-kilometer walk.

#23135

Ephraim M. Sparrow

#23146

Overall Influence

1928 - 2019 (91 years)

Ephraim Maurice Sparrow was a Professor of Engineering at the University of Minnesota. He is known for his contributions to all aspects of heat transfer and fluid mechanics. Sparrow has been listed as an ISI Highly Cited Author in Engineering by the ISI Web of Knowledge, Thomson Scientific Company.

#23136

Craig Ellwood

#23147

Overall Influence

1922 - 1992 (70 years)

Craig Ellwood was an influential Los Angeles-based modernist architect whose career spanned the early 1950s through the mid-1970s. Although untrained as an architect, Ellwood fashioned a persona and career through equal parts of a talent for good design, self-promotion and ambition. He was recognized professionally for fusing of the formalism of Mies van der Rohe with the informal style of California modernism.

#23137

Murray Eden

#23148

Overall Influence

1920 - 2020 (100 years)

Murray Eden , was an American physical chemist and academic. He was a professor in electrical engineering, a lecturer, a visiting professor and adjunct professor at institutions including at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the National Institutes of Health.

#23138

Nancy Denton

#23149

Overall Influence

Nancy Anne Denton is an American sociologist. She is a professor of sociology at the University at Albany, SUNY, where she Professor Emeritus. SUNY Albany, where Dr. Havidan Rodriguez is currently the president of the university. She is known for her research on racial segregation in the United States with Douglas Massey, with whom she co-authored the book American Apartheid. A book, well reviewed by the Los Angeles Times, when first published. Upon retiring from SUNY Albany, she received the Robert and Helen Lynd Lifetime Achievement Award from the Community and Urban Sociology section from ...

#23139

Cherian George

#23150

Overall Influence

Cherian George is a Singaporean academic, currently a professor of Media Studies at Hong Kong Baptist University. Early life and education Cherian George studied at Hwa Chong Junior College for his pre-university education. He then graduated from the University of Cambridge with a bachelor's degree in social and political sciences. Thereafter, he attained his master's degree from Columbia University's School of Journalism.

#23140

Josep Borrell

#23151

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Josep Borrell Fontelles is a Spanish politician serving as High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy since 1 December 2019. A member of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party , he served as President of the European Parliament from 2004 to 2007 and as Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation in the Government of Spain from 2018 to 2019.

#23141

Anabel Quan-Haase

#23152

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Anabel Quan-Haase is a Canadian academic and published author. She is currently a full professor at the University of Western Ontario located in London, Ontario, where she is jointly appointed to the Faculty of Information and Media Studies and the Department of Sociology. Quan-Haase is past-president and past social media director of the Canadian Association for Information Science . She is the 2019-2020 chair of CITAMS section of the American Sociological Association.

#23142

Micael Dahlén

#23153

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Micael Dahlén is a Swedish author, public speaker and Professor of marketing and consumer behavior at the Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden. His award-winning research within marketing, creativity and consumer behavior has been published in four books and numerous journal articles. Dahlén's books have reached a global audience, rights being sold to countries such as the U.S, U.K, Germany, South Korea, Russia and Brazil. In 2013 Dahlén stated in an interview that he was writing a novel.

#23143

Dave Navarro

#23154

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

David Michael Navarro is an American guitarist. He is best known as a member of the rock band Jane's Addiction, with whom he has recorded four studio albums. Between 1993 and 1998, Navarro was the guitarist of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, recording one studio album, One Hot Minute , before departing. He has also released one solo album, Trust No One . Navarro has also been a member of Jane's Addiction-related bands Deconstruction and the Panic Channel.

#23144

Harriet Harman

#23155

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Harriet Ruth Harman is a British politician and solicitor who has served as Member of Parliament for Camberwell and Peckham, formerly Peckham, since 1982. A member of the Labour Party, she has served in various Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet positions.

#23145

Dee Bradley Baker

Dee Bradley Baker

#23156

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Dee Bradley Baker is an American voice actor. His work consists mostly of vocalizations of animals and monsters. Baker's roles include animated series such as SpongeBob SquarePants, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Codename: Kids Next Door, Gravity Falls, Steven Universe, Phineas and Ferb, Ben 10, The Legend of Korra, The 7D, and American Dad! His voice work in live-action series includes Legends of the Hidden Temple and Shop 'til You Drop, as well as films such as Space Jam and The Boxtrolls.

#23146

Uri Davis

#23157

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Uriel "Uri" Davis is an academic and civil rights activist. Davis has served as Vice-Chairman of the Israeli League for Human and Civil Rights and as lecturer in Peace Studies at the University of Bradford. Davis describes himself as "a Palestinian Hebrew national of Jewish origin, anti-Zionist, registered as Muslim and a citizen of an apartheid state - the State of Israel." A member of Fatah since 1984, he was elected to the Revolutionary Council for the Palestinian party in 2009.

#23147

Alex Edmans

#23158

Overall Influence

Alex Edmans is a British academic and economist who is professor of finance at London Business School and Mercers' School Memorial Emeritus Professor of Business at Gresham College. He serves on the World Economic Forum Global Future Council on the Future of Responsible Investing and as a non-executive director of the Investor Forum. He is an elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and the Financial Management Association, Director of the American Finance Association and Vice President-Elect of the Western Finance Association.

#23148

Jennifer Saul

#23159

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

#23149

Max Karoubi

#23160

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Max Karoubi is a French mathematician, topologist, who works on K-theory, cyclic homology and noncommutative geometry and who founded the first European Congress of Mathematics. In 1967, he received his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Paris, under the supervision of Henri Cartan and Alexander Grothendieck.

#23150

Gregg Allman

#23161

Overall Influence

1947 - 2017 (70 years)

Gregory LeNoir Allman was an American musician, singer and songwriter. He was known for performing in the Allman Brothers Band. Allman grew up with an interest in rhythm and blues music, and the Allman Brothers Band fused it with rock music, jazz, and country at times. He wrote several of the band's most popular songs, including "Whipping Post", "Melissa", and "Midnight Rider". Allman also had a successful solo career, releasing seven studio albums. He was born and spent much of his childhood in Nashville, Tennessee, before relocating to Daytona Beach, Florida and then Macon, Georgia.

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