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).

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School

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Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people

#24501

Gianni Rivera

#24512

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Giovanni "Gianni" Rivera is an Italian politician and former footballer who played as an attacking midfielder. Dubbed Italy's "Golden Boy" by the media, he played the majority of his club career with Italian side AC Milan, after beginning his career with hometown club Alessandria in 1959. After joining Milan in 1960, he enjoyed a highly successful career in domestic and European football, winning three Serie A titles and two European Cups, among several other trophies, and also serving as the team's captain for twelve seasons.

#24502

Steve Chen

#24513

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Steve Chen is a Taiwanese computer engineer and internet entrepreneur. Chen was elected to the US National Academy of Engineering in 1991 for leadership in the development of super-computer architectures and their realization.

#24503

Rachel Talalay

#24514

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Rachel Talalay is an American filmmaker and producer best known for directing films such as Ghost in the Machine and Tank Girl . She is also a professor at the University of British Columbia. Early life and education Talalay was born in Chicago. Her father Paul Talalay was a pharmacologist, born in Berlin to a Russian Jewish family, and her mother Pamela is an English biochemist. She has two sisters and a brother. She was raised mostly in Baltimore, with two years of her childhood in Britain. Talalay attended Yale University, where she majored in mathematics, graduating in 1980. She also ra...

#24504

Amita Aggarwal

#24515

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Amita Aggarwal is an Indian clinical immunologist, rheumatologist and a Professor and Head at the Department of Clinical Immunology and Rheumatology of the Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences, Lucknow. Known for her studies in autoimmune rheumatic diseases, Aggarwal is a recipient of the Shakuntala Amir Chand Award of the Indian Council of Medical Research and an elected fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, India, National Academy of Medical Sciences and the National Academy of Medical Sciences. The Department of Biotechnology of the Government of India awarded her...

#24505

Keiko Fujimori

#24516

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Keiko Sofía Fujimori Higuchi is a Peruvian politician. Fujimori is the eldest daughter of former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori and Susana Higuchi. From August 1994 to November 2000, she held the role of First Lady of Peru, during her father's administrations. She has served as the leader of the Fujimorist political party Popular Force since 2010, and was a congresswoman representing the Lima Metropolitan Area, from 2006 to 2011. Fujimori ran for president in the 2011, 2016, and 2021 elections, but was defeated each time in the second round of voting.

#24506

Alan Tyson

#24517

Overall Influence

1926 - 2000 (74 years)

Alan Walker Tyson, was a Glasgow-born British musicologist who specialized in studies of the music of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven. He wrote the Thematic catalogue of the works of Muzio Clementi which appeared in 1967 at Hans Schneider of Tutzing/Germany, with no following editions up to date. Tyson was Senior Research Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, and a Fellow of the British Academy.

#24507

L. Michael White

#24518

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

L. Michael White is an American Biblical scholar. He is Ronald Nelson Smith Chair in Classics and Christian Origins, and director of the Institute for the Study of Antiquity and Christian Origins, at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author or co-author of seven books, editor of four volumes and collected essays, and author of twenty-six articles. In 2011, White won the University of Texas' Robert W. Hamilton Book Award, a $10,000 prize, for his newest book Scripting Jesus . White also won the same award in 2006 for his book From Jesus to Christianity. In addition, White is Project...

#24508

Frank Asaro

#24519

Overall Influence

1927 - 2014 (87 years)

Frank Asaro was an Emeritus Senior Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory associated with the University of California at Berkeley. He is best known as the chemist who discovered the iridium anomaly in the Cretaceous–Paleogene boundary layer that led the team of Luis Alvarez, Walter Alvarez, Frank Asaro, and Helen Michel to propose the Asteroid-Impact Theory, which postulates that an asteroid hit the Earth sixty-five million years ago and caused mass extinction during the age of the dinosaurs.

#24509

Stanley Malamed

Stanley Malamed

#24520

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Stanley F. Malamed is an American dentist and dental anesthesiologist. Early life Malamed was born in the Bronx, New York. He was adopted and raised Jewish. Education Graduating from New York University College of Dentistry in 1969, Malamed completed a 2-year residency in anesthesiology at Montefiore Medical Center in The Bronx, New York. Following this, he served for 2 years in the United States Army Dental Command at Fort Knox, Kentucky.

#24510

Fiona Williams

#24521

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Jonquil Fiona Williams, is a British retired academic of social policy whose research covers gender, race, ethnicity, and the welfare state. From 1996 to 2012, she was Professor of Social Policy at the University of Leeds. She was previously a lecturer at the Polytechnic of North London, Plymouth Polytechnic, and the Open University, before becoming Professor of Applied Social Studies at the University of Bradford.

#24511

Halsey

#24522

Overall Influence

1994 - Present (32 years)

Ashley Nicolette Frangipane , known professionally as Halsey , is an American singer and songwriter. Noted for her distinctive singing voice, she has received several awards including three Billboard Music Awards, a Billboard Women in Music Award, an American Music Award and nominations for three Grammy Awards. She was included on Time annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2020.

#24512

Bang-Yen Chen

#24523

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Chen Bang-yen is a Taiwan-born mathematician who works mainly on differential geometry and related subjects. He was a University Distinguished Professor of Michigan State University from 1990 to 2012. After 2012 he became University Distinguished professor emeritus.

#24513

Frank Reich

#24524

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Frank Michael Reich is a former American football head coach and former quarterback. He served as the head coach for the Indianapolis Colts and Carolina Panthers of the National Football League . He played college football at Maryland and was selected by the Buffalo Bills in the third round of the 1985 NFL Draft. Reich spent most of his career backing up Jim Kelly, although he achieved recognition when he led the Bills to the NFL's largest postseason comeback during the 1992–93 NFL playoffs.

#24514

Natasha Zvereva

Natasha Zvereva

#24525

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Natalya "Natasha" Maratovna Zvereva is a former professional tennis player from Belarus. She was the first major athlete in the Soviet Union to demand publicly that she should be able to keep her tournament earnings. Zvereva and her main doubles partner Gigi Fernández are the most successful women's doubles team since Martina Navratilova and Pam Shriver.

#24515

Amit Shah

#24526

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Amit Anil Chandra Shah is an Indian politician who is currently serving as the 31st Minister of Home Affairs since 2019 and the 1st Minister of Co-operation of India since 2021. He served as the 10th President of the Bharatiya Janata Party from 2014 to 2020. He has also served as chairman of the National Democratic Alliance since 2014. He was elected to the lower house of Parliament, Lok Sabha, in the 2019 Indian general elections from Gandhinagar. Earlier, he had been elected as a member of the upper house of Parliament, Rajya Sabha, from Gujarat from 2017 to 2019.

#24516

Jerrold Meinwald

Jerrold Meinwald

#24527

Overall Influence

1927 - 2018 (91 years)

Jerrold Meinwald was an American chemist known for his work on chemical ecology, a field he co-founded with his colleague and friend Thomas Eisner. He was a Goldwin Smith Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at Cornell University. He was author or co-author of well over 400 scientific articles. His interest in chemistry was sparked by fireworks done with his friend Michael Cava when they were still in junior high school. Meinwald was also a music aficionado and studied flute with Marcel Moyse – the world's greatest flutist of his time.

#24517

Donald Barr

#24528

Overall Influence

1921 - 2004 (83 years)

Donald Barr was an American educator, writer, and Office of Strategic Services officer. He was an administrator at Columbia University before serving as headmaster at the Dalton School in New York City and the Hackley School in Tarrytown, New York. He also wrote two science fiction novels. His sons are former United States Attorney General William Barr and physicist Stephen Barr.

#24518

Madison Keys

#24529

Overall Influence

1995 - Present (31 years)

Madison Keys is an American professional tennis player. She has been ranked as high as world No. 7 by the Women's Tennis Association , which she first achieved in October 2016. Keys has contested a Major singles final at the 2017 US Open, competed at the 2016 WTA Finals, and was a semifinalist at the 2016 Rio Olympics. She has won seven WTA Tour tournaments, six of which were at the Premier level, and won her biggest title at the 2019 Cincinnati Open, a Premier 5 event.

#24519

Joyce C. H. Liu

#24530

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Joyce Chi-Hui Liu is Professor of Critical Theory, Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature at National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan. Liu is the Chair of the Institute of Social Research and Cultural Studies that she founded in 2002. She is also the director of the International Center for Cultural Studies of the University System of Taiwan.

#24520

Michael I. Sovern

#24531

Overall Influence

1931 - 2020 (89 years)

Michael Ira Sovern was the 17th president of Columbia University. Prior to his death, he served as the Chancellor Kent Professor of Law at Columbia Law School. He was a noted legal scholar of Labor Law and an expert in employment discrimination.

#24521

Sheila McNamee

#24532

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Sheila McNamee is an American academic known for her work in human communication and social constructionism theory and practice. She is a Professor of Communication at the University of New Hampshire and founding member, Vice President and board member of the Taos Institute. She has authored numerous, books, chapters, and journal articles. Her work focuses on appreciative dialogic transformation within a variety of social and institutional contexts including psychotherapy, organizations, education, healthcare, and local communities. She engages constructionist practices in a variety of conte...

#24522

Madawi al-Rasheed

Madawi al-Rasheed

#24533

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Madawi al-Rasheed, is a British citizen of Saudi origin and a professor of social anthropology. Al-Rasheed has held a position at the Department of Theology and Religious Studies in King's College London and as a Visiting Professor at the Middle East Centre at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She gives occasional lectures in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. She is the granddaughter of Muhammad bin Talāl al-Rashid, the last prince of the Emirate of Ha'il, which was conquered by the Al-Saud in the early 20th century. She has written several books and articl...

#24523

Ronald M. Gould

#24534

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Ronald Murray Gould is an American lawyer and jurist serving as a U.S. circuit judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit since 1999. Education Gould was born in 1946 in St. Louis, Missouri. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelor of Science. He attended the University of Michigan Law School, graduating in 1973 with a Juris Doctor.

#24524

Mario Andretti

#24535

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Mario Gabriele Andretti is an Italian-born American former racing driver. One of the most successful drivers in the history of motorsports, Andretti is one of only three drivers to have won races in Formula One, IndyCar, the World Sportscar Championship, and NASCAR. He has also won races in midget car racing and sprint car racing.

#24525

Alan Walker

#24536

Overall Influence

1938 - 2017 (79 years)

Alan Cyril Walker was the Evan Pugh Professor of Biological Anthropology and Biology at the Pennsylvania State University and a research scientist for the National Museum of Kenya. Life He received his B.A. from Cambridge University in 1962, and his PhD from the University of London in 1967. In 2000 he received an honorary D.Sc. from the University of Chicago.

#24526

Rafał Pankowski

#24537

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (50 years)

Rafał Pankowski is a Polish sociologist and political scientist. Pankowski is a Phd and associate professor at Collegium Civitas, as well as the head of "Never Again" Association's East Europe Monitoring Center. He is also the deputy editor of Never Again's magazine. He is also involved in monitoring football hooliganism as part of UEFA's Fare network.

#24527

Gordon Pennycook

#24538

Overall Influence

Gordon Robert Pennycook is a Canadian psychologist who is an associate professor at Cornell University. He is also an adjunct professor of Behavioural Science at the University of Regina's Hill and Levene Schools of Business. In 2020, he was elected to be a member of the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists.

#24528

Suzanne Vega

#24539

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Suzanne Nadine Vega is an American singer-songwriter best known for her folk-inspired music. Vega's music career spans almost 40 years. She came to prominence in the mid-1980s, releasing four singles that entered the Top 40 charts in the UK during the 1980s and 1990s, including "Marlene on the Wall", "Left of Center", "Luka" and "No Cheap Thrill". "Tom's Diner", which was originally released as an a cappella recording on Vega's second studio album, Solitude Standing , was remixed in 1990 as a dance track by English electronic duo DNA with Vega as featured artist, and it became a Top 10 hit in over five countries.

#24529

Frank H. Wu

#24540

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Frank H. Wu is an American law professor and author currently serving as the president of Queens College, City University of New York. He served as the William L. Prosser Distinguished Professor at UC Hastings. Wu was also the first Asian American to serve in that position. In November 2015, he announced he would return to teaching.

#24530

F. Stuart Chapin III

#24541

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

F. Stuart Chapin III is a professor of Ecology at the Department of Biology and Wildlife of the Institute of Arctic Biology, University of Alaska. He was President of the Ecological Society of America from August 2010 until 2011.

#24531

Robert J. Art

#24542

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Robert Jeffrey Art is Christian A. Herter Professor of International Relations at Brandeis University, and Fellow at MIT Center for International Studies. He subscribes to the theory of neorealism, which argues that force still underlies the power structure in the modern world. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a United States nonprofit think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy and international affairs.

#24532

Eugenio Coșeriu

#24543

Overall Influence

1921 - 2002 (81 years)

Eugenio Coșeriu was a linguist who specialized in Romance languages at the University of Tübingen, author of over 50 books, honorary member of the Romanian Academy. In 1970 he coined the terms diatopic, diastratic and diaphasic to describe linguistic variation.

#24533

Andrzej Rzepliński

#24544

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Andrzej Rzepliński is a Polish lawyer, Professor of Jurisprudence, human right expert, member of International Helsinki Federation for Human Rights, a judge of the Polish Constitutional Tribunal from 2007 and its president from 2010 to 2016.

#24534

Hugh Carey

#24545

Overall Influence

1919 - 2011 (92 years)

Hugh Leo Carey was an American politician and attorney of the Democratic Party who served in U.S. House of Representatives from 1961 to 1974 and as the 51st governor of New York from 1975 to 1982. Early life Carey was born in New York City, the son of Margaret and Dennis Joseph Carey. Among his siblings were brothers Edward M. Carey and Martin T. Carey .

#24535

Rusty Wallace

#24546

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Russell William "Rusty" Wallace Jr. is an American former NASCAR racing driver. He won the 1984 NASCAR Cup series Rookie of the Year and the 1989 NASCAR Winston Cup Championship. For the accolades over the course of his successful career, Wallace has been inducted in the NASCAR Hall of Fame , the International Motorsports Hall of Fame , the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America and the National Motorsports Press Association Hall of Fame .

#24536

Cyrus Shahabi

#24547

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Cyrus Shahabi is an Iranian-American computer scientist and a 2003 recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. Biography Shahabi received his bachelor's degree in computer engineering from the Sharif University of Technology in 1989, followed by a master's degree and PhD in computer science from the University of Southern California in May 1993 and August 1996 respectively. He currently serves as director of the Integrated Media Systems Center and the Information Laboratory at USC.

#24537

Ursula Dronke

#24548

Overall Influence

1920 - 2012 (92 years)

Ursula Miriam Dronke was an English medievalist and former Vigfússon Reader in Old Norse at the University of Oxford and an Emeritus Fellow of Linacre College. She also taught at the University of Munich and in the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages at Cambridge University.

#24538

Lewis Ryder

#24549

Overall Influence

1941 - 2018 (77 years)

Lewis Howarth Ryder was a British theoretical physicist. Biography Ryder earned a master's degree in physics from Oxford University, a PhD in Mathematical Physics from Edinburgh University under supervision of Peter Higgs, and later an SERC fellowship.

#24539

Brian C. Anderson

#24550

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Brian C. Anderson is an American writer and editor of City Journal, a quarterly magazine, published by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. Anderson received his BA and MA from Boston College. He obtained a doctorate in political philosophy from the University of Ottawa.

#24540

Cindy Fazey

#24551

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Cindy Fazey is a criminologist and former Chief of Demand Reduction for the United Nations Drug Control Programme. She has been Professor of International Drug Policy at the University of Liverpool since 1998. Fazey has spoken in the past of "the complete failure of national and international drugs policies." She has also noted that the organization of the international drug control apparatus makes it difficult to reform the system. On 24 February 2004, Fazey gave a speech at the Perspective on Cannabis conference at Liverpool titled Can you hear the grass growing? Cannabis and the repatriatio...

#24541

Stephen Snobelen

#24552

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Stephen Snobelen is a professor of the history of science and technology at the University of King's College in Halifax, Nova Scotia. His current teaching and research interests are History of science ; Isaac Newton and Newton's theological writings and prophetic writings, Science and religion; The popularization of science; Radical theology in the Early Modern period; and Millenarianism.

#24542

Robert J. Beck

#24553

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Robert J. Beck is an educator and scholar of international law and international relations. Education Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and educated at Marquette University High School, Beck received an Honors B.A. , Phi Beta Kappa, from Marquette University in 1983. He received MA and PhD degrees in International Politics from Georgetown University's Department of Government. Beck also participated in law institutes at New York University's School of Law, the University of Virginia's School of Law, and Dartmouth College.

#24543

Andrea Goldsmith

#24554

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Andrea Goldsmith is an American electrical engineer and the Dean of Engineering and Applied Science at Princeton University. She is also the Arthur LeGrand Doty Professor of Electrical Engineering at Princeton. She was previously the Stephen Harris Professor in the School of Engineering at Stanford University, as well as a faculty affiliate at the Stanford Neurosciences Institute. Her interests are in the design, analysis and fundamental performance limits of wireless systems and networks, and in the application of communication theory and signal processing to neuroscience. She also co-founded and served as chief technology officer of Plume WiFi and Quantenna Communications.

#24544

Richard Isay

#24555

Overall Influence

1934 - 2012 (78 years)

Richard A. Isay was an American psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, author and gay activist. He was a professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College and a faculty member of the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. Isay is considered a pioneer who changed the way that psychoanalysts view homosexuality.

#24545

Garry Marshall

#24556

Overall Influence

1934 - 2016 (82 years)

Garry Kent Marshall was an American screenwriter, film director, producer and actor. Marshall began his career in the 1960s as a writer for The Lucy Show and The Dick Van Dyke Show until he developed the television adaptation of Neil Simon's play The Odd Couple. He rose to fame in the 1970s for creating the ABC sitcom Happy Days, and went on to direct the films The Flamingo Kid, Overboard, Beaches, Pretty Woman, Runaway Bride, and The Princess Diaries, as well as the romantic comedy ensemble films Valentine's Day, New Year's Eve and Mother's Day.

#24546

Mauro Gallegati

#24557

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Mauro Gallegati is an Italian New-Keynesian economist, scholar of agent-based economics, and professor at Marche Polytechnic University in Ancona, Italy. Biography After having earned his PhD in economics in 1989 at Marche Polytechnic University with a thesis on financial fragility under the supervision of Hyman Minsky, Gallegati has held visiting positions, both as a scholar and as a professor at Washington University in St. Louis, University of Cambridge, Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Columbia University, Santa Fe Institute, Brookings Institution, University of...

#24547

James Foster

#24558

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

James Eric Foster is Professor of Economics and International Affairs at the George Washington University, in the Elliott School of International Affairs, researching welfare economics and poverty measurement. He is known for developing the Alkire Foster Method, with University of Oxford professor and OPHI Director Sabina Alkire. He is a board member for the World Bank.

#24548

Hugh Heclo

#24559

Overall Influence

1943 - 2017 (74 years)

Hugh Heclo was born in Marion, Ohio. After receiving a Bachelor of Art's degree from George Washington University in 1965, he went on to receive an M.A. from Manchester University in 1967, and a Ph.D. from Yale University in 1970. Heclo was a Clarence J. Robinson Professor of Public Affairs at George Mason University, in the United States from 1987 until retirement in 2014. He was previously a professor of government at Harvard University and George Washington University in the 1980s. He operated Ashcroft Farms, a Christmas tree farm outside Winchester, Virginia.

#24549

Dom Mintoff

#24560

Overall Influence

1916 - 2012 (96 years)

Dominic Mintoff was a Maltese Socialist politician, architect, and civil engineer who was leader of the Labour Party from 1949 to 1984, and was 8th Prime Minister of Malta from 1955 to 1958, when Malta was still a British colony, and again, following independence, from 1971 to 1984. His tenure as Prime Minister saw the creation of a comprehensive welfare state, nationalisation of large corporations, a substantial increase in the general standard of living and the establishment of the Maltese republic, but was later on marred by a stagnant economy, a rise in authoritarianism and outbreaks of ...

#24550

Masud Husain Khan

#24561

Overall Influence

1919 - 2010 (91 years)

Masud Husain Khan was an Indian linguist, the first Professor Emeritus in Social Sciences at Aligarh Muslim University and the fifth Vice-Chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia, a Central University in New Delhi.

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