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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School

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Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people

#23951

William A. Brock

#23962

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

William Allen "Buz" Brock is a mathematical economist and a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison since 1975. He is known for his application of a branch of mathematics known as chaos theory to economic theory and econometrics. In 1998, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in the Economics Section.

#23952

Kenneth M. Golden

#23963

Overall Influence

Kenneth "Ken" Morgan Golden is an American applied mathematician and Distinguished Professor at the University of Utah. He is recognized as the "Indiana Jones of Mathematics" for his work in polar climate modeling and has traveled to the polar regions eighteen times, in total, to study sea ice.

#23953

Marcelle Ferron

Marcelle Ferron

#23964

Overall Influence

1924 - 2001 (77 years)

Marcelle Ferron, , a Canadian Québécoise painter and stained glass artist, was one of the original 16 signatories of Paul-Émile Borduas's Refus global manifesto, and a major figure in the Quebec contemporary art scene, associated with the Automatistes.

#23954

Mark Winegardner

#23965

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Mark Winegardner is an American writer born and raised in Bryan, Ohio. His novels include The Godfather Returns, Crooked River Burning, and The Veracruz Blues. He published a collection of short stories, That's True of Everybody, in 2002. His newest novel, The Godfather's Revenge, was published in November 2006 by Putnam. His Godfather novels continue the story of the Corleone family depicted in Mario Puzo's The Godfather.

#23955

Amit Goyal

#23966

Overall Influence

Amit Goyal is a SUNY Distinguished Professor and a SUNY Empire Innovation Professor at SUNY-Buffalo. He leads the Laboratory for Heteroepitaxial Growth of Functional Materials & Devices. He is also Director of the New York State Center of Excellence in Plastics Recycling Research & Innovation, an externally funded center with initial funding of $4.5M for three years at SUNY-Buffalo. He is the founding director of the multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary RENEW Institute at SUNY-Buffalo in Buffalo, New York and served as director from 2015-2021. RENEW is an internally funded research institute at SUNY-Buffalo.

#23956

Cloris Leachman

Cloris Leachman

#23967

Overall Influence

1926 - 2021 (95 years)

Cloris Leachman was an American actress and comedian whose career spanned nearly eight decades. She won many accolades, including eight Primetime Emmy Awards from 22 nominations, making her the most nominated and, along with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, most awarded performer in Emmy history. Leachman also won an Academy Award, a BAFTA Award, and a Golden Globe Award.

#23957

Earl Monroe

#23968

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Vernon Earl Monroe is an American former professional basketball player. He played for two teams, the Baltimore Bullets and the New York Knicks, during his career in the National Basketball Association . Both teams have retired Monroe's number. Due to his on-court success and flashy style of play, Monroe was given the nicknames "Black Jesus" and "Earl the Pearl". Monroe was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1990 and the International Sports Hall of Fame in 2013. In 1996, Monroe was named as one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History, and in 2021, Monroe was nam...

#23958

John Krasinski

#23969

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (47 years)

John Burke Krasinski is an American actor and filmmaker. He is known for his role as Jim Halpert on the NBC sitcom The Office. He also served as a producer and occasional director of the series throughout its nine-season run.

#23959

Rachel Nichols

#23970

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Rachel Michele Nichols is an American journalist and sportscaster. She has covered the National Football League , National Hockey League , Major League Baseball , professional tennis, college sports, the Olympics and is most notable for her work with the National Basketball Association . In 2014, Sports Illustrated called Nichols "the country's most impactful and prominent female sports journalist".

#23960

Richard Lower

#23971

Overall Influence

1929 - 2008 (79 years)

Richard Rowland Lower was an American pioneer of cardiac surgery, particularly in the field of heart transplantation. Lower was born in Detroit, attended Amherst College, and received his medical degree from Cornell University in 1955. Lower and Norman Shumway developed many of the techniques required to conduct successful heart transplantation, including the use of hypothermia and the orthotopic technique, which became the standard technique for cardiac transplantation.

#23961

Earl Campbell

#23972

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Earl Christian Campbell , nicknamed "the Tyler Rose", is an American former football running back who played in the National Football League for the Houston Oilers and the New Orleans Saints. Known for his aggressive, punishing running style and ability to break tackles, Campbell gained recognition as one of the best power running backs in NFL history.

#23962

Aníbal Cavaco Silva

#23973

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Aníbal António Cavaco Silva is a Portuguese economist and politician who served as the 19th president of Portugal, from 9 March 2006 to 9 March 2016, and as prime minister of Portugal, from 6 November 1985 to 28 October 1995.

#23963

Arnold Burgen

#23974

Overall Influence

1922 - 2022 (100 years)

Sir Arnold Stanley Vincent Burgen FRS was a British physician, pharmacologist, academic and university administrator. He was Master of Darwin College, Cambridge, from 1982–89, Deputy Vice-Chancellor of The University of Cambridge from 1985–89, and founding President of the Academia Europæa.

#23964

Angie Hobbs

#23975

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Angela Hunter "Angie" Hobbs is a British philosopher and academic, who specialises in Ancient Greek philosophy and ethics. She is Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield.

#23965

Jerome Karabel

#23976

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Jerome Bernard Karabel is an American sociologist, political and social commentator, and Professor of Sociology at the University of California at Berkeley. He has written extensively on American institutions of higher education and on various aspects of social policy and history in the United States, often from a comparative perspective.

#23966

Arno Ros

#23977

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Arno Ros is a German philosopher and Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg in Magdeburg, Germany. Biography Studies and initial teaching positions Ros studied Ibero-Romance languages, sociology, literature and philosophy in Hamburg, Madrid and Coimbra . He received his doctorate in 1971 for the dissertation On the theory of literary narrative. He earned his habilitation in Saarbrücken as an assistant of Kuno Lorenz. The title of his habilitation thesis was Philosophy as a methodological critique of meaning. In subsequent years, Ros was a visiting...

#23967

Jürgen Gauß

#23978

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Jürgen Gauß is a German theoretical chemist. Gauß was born on 13 August 1960 in Konstanz. He studied chemistry at the University of Cologne from 1979 till 1984. After finishing his PhD thesis on abinitio calculations at the University of Cologne in 1988, he did postdoctoral studies at the University of Washington in Seattle and at the University of Florida in Gainesville about quantum theory. He did his habilitation in 1994 at the University of Karlsruhe on abinitio calculations of NMR-shiftss. In 1995, he became professor at the University of Mainz.

#23968

Basil Yamey

#23979

Overall Influence

1919 - 2020 (101 years)

Basil Selig Yamey CBE was a South African economist and expert in the history of accounting. Career He was born in Cape Town in South Africa in May 1919, and educated at the University of Cape Town. For many years he was a professor at the London School of Economics. He was a part-time member of the Monopolies and Mergers Commission from 1966 to 1978, and author of many books and articles, including one on the economics of underdeveloped countries co-authored with Peter Thomas Bauer.

#23969

Mick LaSalle

#23980

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Mick LaSalle is an American film critic and the author of two books on pre-Code Hollywood. Up to March 2008, he had written more than 1,550 reviews for the San Francisco Chronicle and he has been podcasting them since September 2005.

#23970

Laura Mulvey

#23981

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Laura Mulvey is a British feminist film theorist and filmmaker. She was educated at St Hilda's College, Oxford. She is currently professor of film and media studies at Birkbeck, University of London. She previously taught at Bulmershe College, the London College of Printing, the University of East Anglia, and the British Film Institute.

#23971

Matthew P. A. Fisher

#23982

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Matthew P. A. Fisher is an American theoretical physicist and professor of physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and is known for several major contributions to condensed matter physics. He completed his bachelor's degree in engineering physics from Cornell University in 1981 and earned a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1986 with Anthony Leggett as his advisor, with part of his work done under the supervision of Eduardo Fradkin. He went on to become first a visiting scientist and then a research staff member at IBM T. J. Watson Research Center .

#23972

Karen S. Haynes

#23983

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Karen Sue Haynes is an American academic and college administrator who previously served as the president of California State University San Marcos. She also served as president of the University of Houston–Victoria.

#23973

James Goodby

#23984

Overall Influence

1929 - Present (97 years)

James Eugene Goodby is an author and former American diplomat. Goodby was born in Providence, Rhode Island. He graduated from Harvard University with an A.B. in 1951 and served as a second lieutenant in the Air Force during the Korean War from 1952–53. He attended the University of Michigan and Harvard University .

#23974

Hafiz Siddiqi

#23985

Overall Influence

1931 - 2018 (87 years)

Hafiz G. A. Siddiqi was a Bangladeshi academician. He served as the vice-chancellor of North South University and the director of Institute of Business Administration, University of Dhaka. Early life and education After finishing class 4, Siddiqi decided to completely memorize the Quran. Four years later, after the memorization, he earned the title Hafiz and went back to a regular school.

#23975

Qaiser Mushtaq

#23986

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Qaiser Mushtaq , , is a Pakistani mathematician and academic who has made numerous contributions in the field of Group theory and Semigroup. He has been vice-chancellor of The Islamia University Bahawalpur from December 2014 to December 2018. Mushtaq is one of the leading mathematicians and educationists in Pakistan. Through his research and writings, he has exercised a profound influence on mathematics in Pakistan. Mushtaq is an honorary full professor at the Mathematics Division of the Institute for Basic Research, Florida, US.

#23976

Madhuri Dixit

#23987

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Madhuri Dixit Nene is an Indian actress who primarily works in Hindi films. A leading actress of Indian cinema, she has appeared in over 70 films. Noted by critics for her beauty, dancing skills, and characters, Dixit was credited for singularly paralleling her male contemporaries and leading star vehicles in a male-dominated industry.

#23977

Greg Epstein

#23988

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (49 years)

Greg M. Epstein is the president of the Harvard Chaplains Organization and Humanist Chaplain at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is an ordained Humanist Rabbi, and has been influential in American humanism as a blogger, spokesperson, adviser and author of the New York Times bestseller Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe. Epstein was an expert on the first three seasons of the reality show "Married at First Sight."

#23978

Fela Kuti

#23989

Overall Influence

1938 - 1997 (59 years)

Fela Aníkúlápó Kútì , also known as Abàmì Ẹ̀dá, was a Nigerian musician, bandleader, composer, political activist, and Pan-Africanist. He is regarded as the King of Afrobeat, a Nigerian music genre that combines West African music with American funk and jazz. At the height of his popularity, he was referred to as one of Africa's most "challenging and charismatic music performers". AllMusic described him as "a musical and sociopolitical voice" of international significance.

#23979

Michael Levey

#23990

Overall Influence

1927 - 2008 (81 years)

Sir Michael Vincent Levey, LVO, FBA, FRSL was a British art historian and was the director of the National Gallery from 1973 to 1986. Biography Levey was born in Wimbledon, London, and grew up in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex. He attended The Oratory School, a Catholic boarding school near Reading. He was called up for National Service in 1945 and served it largely in Egypt. After demobilisation in 1948 Levey went to Exeter College, Oxford to read English; he graduated with first class honours after only two years' study.

#23980

Kristen Bell

#23991

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (46 years)

Kristen Anne Bell is an American actress. She began her acting career starring in stage productions, while attending the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. She made her Broadway stage debut as Becky Thatcher in the comedy musical The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and appeared in a Broadway revival of The Crucible the following year. She later appeared in the action thriller film Spartan and received praise for her performance in the television drama film Gracie's Choice .

#23981

Omowunmi Sadik

#23992

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Omowunmi "Wunmi" A. Sadik is a Nigerian professor, chemist, and inventor working at New Jersey Institute of Technology. She has developed microelectrode biosensors for detection of drugs and explosives and is working on the development of technologies for recycling metal ions from waste, for use in environmental and industrial applications. In 2012, Sadik co-founded the non-profit Sustainable Nanotechnology Organization.

#23982

Peter Murray-Rust

Peter Murray-Rust

#23993

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Peter Murray-Rust is a chemist currently working at the University of Cambridge. As well as his work in chemistry, Murray-Rust is also known for his support of open access and open data. Education He was educated at Bootham School, a private school in York, and at Balliol College, Oxford. After obtaining a Doctor of Philosophy with a thesis entitled A structural investigation of some compounds showing charge-transfer properties, he became lecturer in chemistry at the University of Stirling and was first warden of Andrew Stewart Hall of Residence. In 1982, he moved to Glaxo Group Research at G...

#23983

Abba Eban

#23994

Overall Influence

1915 - 2002 (87 years)

Abba Solomon Meir Eban was a South African-born Israeli diplomat and politician, and a scholar of the Arabic and Hebrew languages. During his career, he served as Foreign Affairs Minister, Education Minister, and Deputy Prime Minister of Israel. He was the second ambassador to the United States and the first Permanent Representative of Israel to the United Nations. He was also Vice President of the United Nations General Assembly and President of the Weizmann Institute of Science.

#23984

Vince Vaughn

#23995

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Vincent Anthony Vaughn is an American actor. He began acting in the late 1980s, appearing in minor television roles before attaining wider recognition with the 1996 comedy-drama film Swingers. Vaughn further appeared in Rudy , At Risk , The Lost World: Jurassic Park , Psycho , South of Heaven, West of Hell , and Domestic Disturbance . He starred as Frank Semyon in the second season of the HBO anthology crime drama television series True Detective .

#23985

James Wines

#23996

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (94 years)

James Wines is an American artist and architect associated with environmental design. Wines is founder and president of SITE, a New York City -based architecture and environmental arts organization chartered in 1970. This multi-disciplinary practice focuses on the design of buildings, public spaces, environmental art works, landscape designs, master plans, interiors and product design. The main focus of his design work is on green issues and the integration of buildings with their surrounding contexts.

#23986

Antti Kupiainen

#23997

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Antti Kupiainen is a Finnish mathematical physicist. Education and career Kupiainen completed his undergraduate education in 1976 at the Technical University of Helsinki and received his Ph.D. in 1979 from Princeton University under Thomas C. Spencer with thesis Some rigorous results on the 1/n expansion. As a postdoc he spent the academic year 1979/80 at Harvard University and then did research at the University of Helsinki. He became a professor of mathematics in 1989 at Rutgers University and in 1991 at the University of Helsinki.

#23987

DeMar DeRozan

#23998

Overall Influence

1989 - Present (37 years)

DeMar Darnell DeRozan is an American professional basketball player for the Chicago Bulls of the National Basketball Association . He played college basketball for the USC Trojans and was selected ninth overall by the Toronto Raptors in the 2009 NBA draft. He is a six-time NBA All-Star and a three-time All-NBA Team member. He spent nine seasons with the Raptors, including five playoff runs, before being traded to the San Antonio Spurs in the summer of 2018 and the Bulls in 2021. DeRozan has played for the United States national team in the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics.

#23988

Diane Francis

#23999

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Diane Marie Francis is a Canadian journalist, author and editor-at-large for the National Post newspaper since 1998. Background Francis was born in Chicago, Illinois, on 14 November 1946. She immigrated to Canada in 1966 and became a naturalized Canadian citizen. She is married and has two adult children.

#23989

Shawki Allam

#24000

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Shawki Ibrahim Abdel-Karim Allam is the 19th and current Grand Mufti of Egypt through Dar al-Ifta al-Misriyyah, succeeding Ali Gomaa. Biography Allam was born in the Nile Delta governorate of Beheira on 12 August 1961. He received his PhD in 1996 from the Al-Azhar University in Jurisprudence and Sharia law. Before his appointment, he served as the chairman of the Department of Jurisprudence at the School of Sharia at Al-Azhar University's Tanta branch. Allam is a Sufi.

#23990

Ann D. Gordon

#24001

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Ann Dexter Gordon is an American research professor in the department of history at Rutgers University and editor of the papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, a survey of more than 14,000 papers relating to the pair of 19th century women's rights activists. She is also the editor of the multi-volume work, Selected Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, and has authored a number of other books about the history of the women's suffrage movement. She worked with popular historian Ken Burns on his 1999 book and appears in his documentary film about Stanton and Anthony.

#23991

Bernard de Neumann

#24002

Overall Influence

1943 - 2018 (75 years)

Frederick Bernard de Neumann He was educated at the Royal Hospital School and Birmingham University, and was Professor of Mathematics at The City University. He was a descendant of Johann Andreas von Neumann, nobleman of the Holy Roman Empire, Vienna, 29 March 1797, and of Johann Heinrich von Neumann, nobleman of the Kingdom of Bavaria, Munich, 20 January 1824.

#23992

Jack Woolf

#24003

Overall Influence

1924 - 2014 (90 years)

Jack Royce Woolf was an American academic who arrived at Arlington State College in 1957 as dean of the college. After one year as dean, the Texas A&M Board appointed him acting president in 1958 and president in 1959. In 1967, upon the university leaving the Texas A&M System for the University of Texas System and with the accompanying name change, Woolf became president of The University of Texas at Arlington. Woolf resigned the presidency in 1968, but continued service to the university until 1989.

#23993

Anastacia

#24004

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Anastacia Lyn Newkirk is an American singer, songwriter and former dancer. Her first two albums Not That Kind and Freak of Nature were released in quick succession to major success. Spurred on by the multi-platinum, global smash "I'm Outta Love", Anastacia was awarded as the 'World's Best-Selling New Female Pop Artist' in 2001. Her commercial success continued with international hits such as "Paid My Dues", "One Day In Your Life" and the official song of the 2002 FIFA World Cup, "Boom". After recovering from cancer, she returned with 2004's Anastacia which deviated from previous albums into pop-rock.

#23994

Vincenzo Barone

#24005

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Vincenzo Barone is an Italian chemist, active in the field of theoretical and computational chemistry. He became full professor of physical chemistry at the University of Naples in 1994, and professor of theoretical and computational chemistry at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa in 2009.

#23995

Ashok Kumar

#24006

Overall Influence

1911 - 2001 (90 years)

Ashok Kumar , was an Indian actor who attained iconic status in Indian cinema. He was a pioneering actor who introduced natural acting to Hindi cinema. He is considered the first superstar of Hindi cinema in the black-and-white era of the 40s and 50s as well as the first lead actor to play an anti-hero. He also became the first star to reinvent himself, enjoying a long and hugely successful career as a character actor. He was a member of the cinematic Ganguly family. He was honoured in 1988 with the Dadasaheb Phalke Award, the highest national award for cinema artists, by the Government of India.

#23996

Jamshid Gharajedaghi

#24007

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Jamshid Gharajedaghi is an Iranian-American organizational theorist, management consultant, and Adjunct Professor of Systems thinking at Villanova University. He is known for his work of systems thinking, managing complexity, and business architecture.

#23997

Sarah Michelle Gellar

Sarah Michelle Gellar

#24008

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (49 years)

Sarah Michelle Prinze is an American actress. After being spotted at the age of four in New York City, she made her acting debut in the television film An Invasion of Privacy . A leading role in the syndicated teen drama series Swans Crossing was followed by her breakthrough as Kendall Hart in the ABC daytime soap opera All My Children , for which she won the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Younger Actress in a Drama Series.

#23998

Diana Taurasi

#24009

Overall Influence

1982 - Present (44 years)

Diana Lorena Taurasi is an American professional basketball player for the Phoenix Mercury of the Women's National Basketball Association , and is considered to be one of the greatest players in WNBA history. She was drafted by Phoenix first overall in the 2004 WNBA draft. Taurasi has won the WNBA Rookie of the Year Award , three WNBA championships , a historic five Olympic gold medals , one WNBA Most Valuable Player Award , two WNBA Finals MVP Awards , five scoring titles , and three FIBA World Cups . She has also been selected to ten WNBA All-Star teams and fourteen All-WNBA teams . In 2011...

#23999

Ronald Deibert

#24010

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Ronald James Deibert is a Canadian professor of political science, philosopher, founder and director of the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto. He is a co-founder and a principal investigator of the OpenNet Initiative and Information Warfare Monitor projects. Deibert was one of the founders and former VP of global policy and outreach for Psiphon.

#24000

Michael A. Harrison

#24011

Overall Influence

Michael A. Harrison is a computer scientist, in particular a pioneer in the area of formal languages. Biography Michael A. Harrison studied electrical engineering and computing for BS and MS at the Case Institute of Technology, and then received a PhD from the University of Michigan in Communication Sciences. He was assistant professor from 1963 to 1966 at the University of Michigan, and then joined the faculty of the E.E. Dept at the University of California at Berkeley, where he was an associate professor from 1966 to 1971, and a full professor from 1971 to 1994.

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