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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Search Influential People

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School

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Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people

#2451

George Gloeckler George Gloeckler

#116518

Overall Influence

#2452

Nadia Lapusta

#116557

Overall Influence

Nadia Lapusta is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Geophysics at the California Institute of Technology. She designed the first computational model that could accurately and efficiently simulate sequence of earthquakes and interseismic slow deformation on a planar fault in a single consistent physical framework.

#2453

Johnny Huard

#116579

Overall Influence

#2454

Cyril Fisher

#116593

Overall Influence

#2455

Mark Griswold

#116651

Overall Influence

Mark Griswold is an American engineer currently Professor at Case Western Reserve University and an Elected Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors. Education He earned his B.S in Electrical Engineering at University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and his Ph.D in physics at University of Würzburg.

#2456

Joseph Ambrose Loo

#116668

Overall Influence

#2457

Terry A. Miller

#116706

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (82 years)

#2458

Deidre Hunter

#116818

Overall Influence

Deidre A. Hunter is an American astronomer at Lowell Observatory. Her primary research area is tiny irregular galaxies — their origins, evolution and star production, and the shapes that are formed. She uses many parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, and includes spectroscopy in her approach.

#2459

Nicholas M. Smith Jr.

#116989

Overall Influence

1914 - 2003 (89 years)

Nicholas Monroe Smith Jr. was a nuclear physicist and research consultant. Smith was an expert on reactor physics, a developer of operations research/computer modeling, and a computer applications consultant. He had ties to the Manhattan Project at Chicago and Oak Ridge, and worked with Samuel Allison and James Van Allen. Smith was a pioneer in the field of operations research.

#2460

Susan K. Gregurick

#117010

Overall Influence

Susan Kathryn Gregurick is an American computational chemist. She is the associate director for data science at the National Institutes of Health . Gregurick is the director of the NIH Office of Data Science Strategy.

#2461

James C. Brau

#117035

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (56 years)

James Carl Brau is an American economist, focusing in issues pertaining to initial public offerings, entrepreneurial finance, and real estate, currently the Joel C. Peterson Professor of Finance at Marriott School of Management, Brigham Young University.

#2462

Maria Jasin

#117155

Overall Influence

#2463

Romney Duffey

#117236

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (83 years)

Romney Beecher Duffey is an American nuclear scientist. Duffey has worked on modern energy systems, in the areas of thermohydraulics, system design, system analysis, risk assessment, human factors, and technological safety in Britain, United States and Canada for about 40 years, and authored numerous publications, including several books.

#2464

William E. Kraus

#117369

Overall Influence

#2465

George E Fox

#117464

Overall Influence

#2466

Kerstin Perez

#117594

Overall Influence

Kerstin Perez is an Associate Professor of Particle Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is interested in physics beyond the standard model. She leads the silicon detector program for the General AntiParticle Spectrometer and the high-energy X-ray analysis community for the NuSTAR telescope array.

#2467

Carlos Brody

#117678

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (75 years)

Carlos D. Brody is a Mexican neuroscientist who is currently the Wilbur H. Gantz III '59 Professor in Neuroscience at Princeton University and is an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. A cited expert in his field, his interests include systems neuroscience.

#2468

Joanna Sułkowska

#117744

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (25 years)

Joanna Ida Sułkowska is a Polish physicist and chemist who specializes in biophysics and protein molecular biophysics and theory. She is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Chemistry and the Center of New Technologies at the University of Warsaw.

#2469

George W. Flynn

#117768

Overall Influence

1938 - 2020 (82 years)

George W. Flynn was an American physical chemist and professor, known for his work in laser spectroscopy and scanning tunneling microscopy. Early life and career In 1938, Flynn was born and raised in Hartford, CT. Following the death of his father while he was still in high school, he was admitted to Yale University on a full scholarship. As an undergraduate he worked on research in the laboratory of Julian Sturtevant in the chemistry department at Yale. He received his bachelor's degree in 1960 and went to Harvard University to pursue a doctorate in chemistry. His thesis was supervised jointly by E.

#2470

Frederick Kantor

Frederick Kantor

#117769

Overall Influence

1942 - 2020 (78 years)

Frederick Kantor was an American physicist and inventor. He is known for his early work on digital physics, originally coined by Kantor as information mechanics which described "previously thought dissimilar phenomena, such as the fine structure constant and cosmological red shift ".

#2471

Sham Kakade

#117778

Overall Influence

Sham Machandranath Kakade is an American computer scientist. He is a Gordon McKay Professor in Computer Science at Harvard University, with a joint appointment in the Department of Statistics. He co-founded the Algorithmic Foundations of Data Science Institute.

#2472

Steven E Jacobsen

#117905

Overall Influence

#2473

Shalender Bhasin

#117983

Overall Influence

#2474

Heather Graven

#117999

Overall Influence

Heather Dawn Graven is a lecturer in Atmospheric Physics at Imperial College London. She creates mathematical models to predict how climate change will impact the carbon cycle. Education Graven earned a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering from California Institute of Technology in 2001. She won the Dean's Cup for contributions to student life. She earned a PhD from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 2008. Her PhD thesis, Advancing the use of radiocarbon in studies of global and regional carbon cycling with high precision measurements of 14C in CO2 from the Scripps CO2 Program, wa...

#2475

William G. Bade

William G. Bade

#118064

Overall Influence

1924 - 2012 (88 years)

William George Bade was an American mathematician, who did his most significant work on Banach algebras. Biography Bade's father was scholar William F. Badè, who died in 1936. After his father's death, Bade moved with his mother and sister from Berkeley to San Diego, where he graduated from high school in 1942. He spent his freshman year in college at Pomona College and then, under the V-12 Navy College Training Program, studied at Caltech, where he received his bachelor's physics degree in 1945. He received more training which continued until after the end of WW II. After active duty as a Disbursing Officer in the U.S.

#2476

Michael H. Carr

#118173

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (90 years)

#2477

Christopher J. Hardy

#118192

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (86 years)

Christopher J. Hardy is an American physicist and inventor of several magnetic resonance imaging subsystem technologies for use in real time MRI and cardiac MR imaging and spectroscopy. Biography Hardy obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in March, 1983. He is currently a principal scientist and Coolidge Fellow at General Electric. He developed the first graphical approach that allowed physicians to explore anatomy in real time during cardiac MRI, as opposed to viewing groups of images at a later time, and he also developed a technique that improved imaging speed.

#2478

Edo Berger

#118225

Overall Influence

#2479

Mary Ann Weitnauer

#118233

Overall Influence

Mary Ann Weitnauer is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Georgia Tech, known for her research on optical communication, radar, wireless networks, and smart antennas. Weitnauer graduated from Georgia Tech in 1983, and completed her Ph.D. there in 1989. She joined the Georgia Tech faculty in 1989, after completing her doctorate. At Georgia Tech, she was ADVANCE Professor of Engineering from 2006 to 2011.

#2480

Hellmut Eckert

#118235

Overall Influence

#2481

Stephen W. Lovesey

#118292

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (82 years)

#2482

Edward Knightly

#118303

Overall Influence

Edward W. Knightly is an American professor and the department chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rice University in Houston, Texas. He joined the Rice University faculty in 1996. He heads the Rice Networks Group.

#2483

Hal A. Weaver

#118321

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (72 years)

Harold Anthony "Hal" Weaver, Jr. is an American astronomer, known for his research into the composition of solar system bodies including comets and Kuiper belt objects. Weaver attended Duke University as an undergraduate, and obtained his PhD from Johns Hopkins, where he researched the spectra of comets using data from the International Ultraviolet Explorer space telescope.

#2484

David G. Streets

#118326

Overall Influence

#2485

Peter D. Drummond

#118489

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (75 years)

#2486

Laura P. Bautz

#118517

Overall Influence

1940 - 2014 (74 years)

Laura Patricia Bautz was an American astronomer who worked for many years at the National Science Foundation, where she directed the Division of Astronomical Science. The Bautz–Morgan classification of galaxy clusters is named for her work with William Wilson Morgan, published in 1970.

#2487

Elizabeth Trembath-Reichert

#118689

Overall Influence

Elizabeth Trembath-Reichert is a geomicrobiologist and astrobiologist at Arizona State University's School of Earth and Space Exploration. Early life and education Trembath-Reichert earned a bachelors degree in environmental science and physics from Barnard College in 2008, graduating Cum Laude. She received a masters degree and a Ph.D. in Geobiology from the California Institute of Technology in 2013 and 2016, respectively. Prior to earning these degrees she worked at NOAA for two years as a physical scientist.

#2488

David H. Ledbetter

#118762

Overall Influence

#2489

Martin Oestreich

#118780

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (54 years)

#2490

Laurie Leshin

#118861

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (59 years)

Laurie Leshin is an American scientist and academic administrator serving as the 10th Director of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and as Vice President and Bren Professor of Geochemistry and Planetary Science at California Institute of Technology. Leshin's research has focused on geochemistry and space science. Leshin previously served as the 16th president of Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

#2491

Yosef Shiloh

#118891

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (76 years)

#2492

W. Stephen Wilson

#118901

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (79 years)

W. Stephen Wilson is a mathematician based in Johns Hopkins University specializing in homotopy theory. Wilson received his Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1972 under the supervision of Franklin Paul Peterson.

#2493

Dick Hoekstra

#118928

Overall Influence

#2494

Mary B. Kennedy

#118937

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (78 years)

Mary Bernadette Kennedy is an American biochemist and neuroscientist. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is the Allen and Lenabelle Davis Professor of Biology at the California Institute of Technology, where she has been a member of the faculty since 1981. Her research focuses on the molecular mechanisms of synaptic plasticity, the process underlying formation of memory in the central nervous system. Her lab uses biochemical and molecular biological methods to study the protein machinery within a structure called the postsynaptic density. Kennedy has published o...

#2495

David G. Whitten

#118948

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (87 years)

#2496

Tadhg Begley

#118970

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (75 years)

Tadhg P. Begley is an Irish chemist and Distinguished Professor, Robert A. Welch Foundation Chair and Derek Barton Chair of Chemistry at Texas A&M University, and also a published author of books. His honors include Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, National Institutes of Health Merit Award, National University of Chemistry Honorary D.Sc.

#2497

Lucy Ziurys

#118973

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (68 years)

Lucy Marie Ziurys is an American astrochemist known for her work on high-resolution molecular spectroscopy. She is Regent's Professor of Chemistry & Biology and of Astronomy at the University of Arizona.

#2498

Allison J. Doupe

Allison J. Doupe

#119075

Overall Influence

1954 - 2014 (60 years)

Allison Jane Doupe was a Canadian psychiatrist, biologist, and neuroscientist. She is best known for her pioneering work in avian neurobiology that linked birdsong to human language, showing that birds and humans learn to communicate in similar ways. In 2014, Doupe was awarded the Pradel Research Award by the National Academy of Sciences for her work on neural circuits and information processing in songbirds.

#2499

B. Sriram Shastry

#119156

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (75 years)

Balajapalli Sriram Shastry is an Indian-American condensed matter physicist, specializing in strongly-correlated Fermi systems, quantum integrable systems, and statistical mechanics. Biography B. Sriram Shastry graduated in 1968 with a B.Sc. from Nagpur University and in 1970 with an M.Sc. in physics from Indian Institute of Technology Madras . He received his Ph.D. in 1976 from Mumbai's Tata Institute of Fundamental Research , where he worked with Chanchal Kumar Majumdar. Shastry's doctoral dissertation, entitled Studies in the Magnetic Properties of C.P.C. and Nickel, dealt with "itinerant magnetism and quantum systems in low dimensions".

#2500

James F. Howard Jr.

#119172

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (77 years)

James Francis Howard Jr. is a Professor of Neurology and Medicine at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Career Howard was born on May 3, 1948, in Bellows Falls, Vermont. He received a BA in 1970 and a M.D. in 1974, both from the University of Vermont.

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