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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List of the most influential people

#24651

Andrew H. Van de Ven

#24662

Overall Influence

1945 - 2022 (77 years)

Andrew H. Van de Ven was an American organization scholar, and Professor Emeritus in the Carlson School of Management of the University of Minnesota. Biography Andrew H. Van de Ven received his bachelor's degree in Philosophy and Business Administration from St. Norbert College. Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1972.

#24652

Marion Jones

#24663

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Marion Lois Jones , also known as Marion Jones-Thompson, is an American former world champion track-and-field athlete and former professional basketball player. She won three gold medals and two bronze medals at the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia, but was later stripped of her medals after admitting to steroid use.

#24653

Khairulla Murtazin

#24664

Overall Influence

1941 - 2016 (75 years)

Murtazin Khairulla Khabibullovich was a Russian mathematician. Since 1978 he has been the Head of the Chair of Mathematical analysis Bashkir State University. Biography Murtazin was born in the village Aznash in Uchalinsky District, now in Bashkortostan. He graduated from the Department of Mathematics of Bashkir State University and defended his doctoral thesis in 1994. Since 1978 until the present day he is the head of the Mathematical Analysis chair of the department

#24654

Alicia Partnoy

#24665

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Alicia Mabel Partnoy is a human rights activist, poet, college professor, and translator. After Argentinian President Juan Perón died, the students from the left of the Peronist political party organized with fervor within the country's universities and, along with workers, were persecuted and imprisoned. There was a military coup in 1976 and people began to disappear. Partnoy was one of those who suffered through the ordeals of becoming a political prisoner. She became an activist of the Peronist Youth Movement while attending Southern National University .

#24655

Wen-Hsiung Li

#24666

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Wen-Hsiung Li is a Taiwanese-American scientist working in the fields of molecular evolution, population genetics, and genomics. He is currently the James Watson Professor of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago and a Principal Investigator at the Institute of Information Science and Genomics Research Center, Academia Sinica, Taiwan.

#24656

Karl-Gottfried Prasse

#24667

Overall Influence

1929 - 2018 (89 years)

Karl-Gottfried Prasse was a Danish linguist with a focus in the Berber language. He was mainly concerned with the Tuareg-Berber language spoken in Niger, Mali and southern Algeria. For this language, he has authored dictionaries and complete grammar descriptions.

#24657

Robert Berner

#24668

Overall Influence

1935 - 2015 (80 years)

Robert Arbuckle Berner was an American scientist known for his contributions to the modeling of the carbon cycle. He taught Geology and Geophysics from 1965 to 2007 at Yale University, where he latterly served as Professor Emeritus until his death. His work on sedimentary rocks led to the co-founding of the BLAG model of atmospheric carbon dioxide, which takes into account both geochemical and biological contributions to the carbon cycle.

#24658

Gila Sher

#24669

Overall Influence

Gila Sher is an American logician and professor of philosophy at the University of California, San Diego. She has worked extensively in the theory of truth and philosophy of logic. Sher is a leading advocate of foundational holism, a holistic theory of epistemology.

#24659

Isaac Passy

#24670

Overall Influence

1928 - 2010 (82 years)

Isaac Passy was a Bulgarian Jewish philosopher specializing in history, literature and aesthetics. He was a prominent professor at Sofia University from 1952 until 1993. He published over 40 monographs and edited some 80 volumes with philosophical texts and in history of philosophy from various epochs. He is the father of the Bulgarian politician and diplomat Solomon Passy.

#24660

Alfred Goldie

#24671

Overall Influence

1920 - 2005 (85 years)

Alfred William Goldie was an English mathematician. Biography Goldie was educated at Wolverhampton Grammar School and then read mathematics at St John's College, Cambridge. His studies were interrupted by war work on ballistics with the Armament Research Department of the Ministry of Supply, eventually taking his BA in 1942 and MA in 1946.

#24661

George Rekers

#24672

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

George Alan Rekers is an American psychologist and ordained Southern Baptist minister. He is emeritus professor of Neuropsychiatry and Behavioral Science at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine. Rekers has a PhD from University of California, Los Angeles and has been a research fellow at Harvard University, a professor and psychologist for UCLA and the University of Florida, and department head at Kansas State University.

#24662

Jan Koenderink

#24673

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Jan Johan Koenderink is a Dutch physicist and psychologist known for his researches on visual perception, computer vision, and geometry. Koenderink earned a bachelor's degree from Utrecht University in 1964, a master's in 1967, and a Ph.D. in 1972 on a thesis titled Models of the visual system. He was a full professor of physics and astronomy at Utrecht University from 1978 until his mandatory retirement in 2008; since then, he has held fellow or visiting professor positions at Utrecht, the Delft University of Technology, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Katholieke Universiteit...

#24663

Thomas Royen

#24674

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Thomas Royen is a retired German professor of statistics who has been affiliated with the University of Applied Sciences Bingen. Royen came to prominence in the spring of 2017 for a relatively simple proof for the Gaussian Correlation Inequality , a conjecture that originated in the 1950s, which he had published three years earlier without much recognition. A proof of this conjecture, which lies at the intersection of geometry, probability theory and statistics, had eluded top experts for decades.

#24664

John Muellbauer

#24675

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

John Norbert Joseph Muellbauer, FBA is a British applied economist who is a professor at the University of Oxford. He holds several positions at Oxford University including an Official Fellowship at Nuffield College and a professorship and senior fellowship at the Institute for New Economic Thinking. He also is a fellow not only of the British Academy, but also of the Econometric Society, the Centre for Economic Policy Research and of the European Economic Association .

#24665

Engin Yıldırım

#24676

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Engin Yıldırım is a Turkish professor of Labor Economics and the vice-president of the Constitutional Court of Turkey. Early life Engin Yıldırım completed his high school education in 1983 in Beylerbeyi High School. He graduated from the department of Labor Economics and Industrial Relations at Istanbul University in 1987. Yıldırım received his BA from Warwick Business School at University of Warwick in 1989, and PhD from Faculty of Economics and Social Studies, Department of Sociology at University of Manchester in 1994.

#24666

Ronald Giere

#24677

Overall Influence

1938 - 2020 (82 years)

Ronald Giere was an American philosopher of science who was an emeritus professor of philosophy at the University of Minnesota. He was a Fellow of The AAAS, a long-time member of the editorial board of the journal Philosophy of Science, and a past president of the Philosophy of Science Association. His research focused on agent-based accounts of models and scientific representation, and on connections between naturalism and secularism.

#24667

Christiane Nord

#24678

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Christiane Nord is a German translation scholar. Biography She studied translation at Heidelberg University ; in 1983 she obtained her PhD in Romance Studies, with habilitation in applied translation studies and translation pedagogy. From 1967 she has been involved in translator training at the universities of Heidelberg, Vienna, Hildesheim, Innsbruck and Magdeburg .

#24668

Patti Page

#24679

Overall Influence

1927 - 2013 (86 years)

Clara Ann Fowler , better known by her stage name Patti Page, was an American singer. Primarily known for pop and country music, she was the top-charting female vocalist and best-selling female artist of the 1950s, selling over 100 million records during a six-decade-long career. She was often introduced as "the Singin' Rage, Miss Patti Page". New York WNEW disc-jockey William B. Williams introduced her as "A Page in my life called Patti".

#24669

Betül Tanbay

#24680

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Betül Tanbay is a Turkish mathematician, scientist and professor of mathematics at the Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, Turkey and the first woman president of the Turkish Mathematical Society between 2010 and 2016.

#24670

Jay McDaniel

#24681

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Jay B. McDaniel is an American philosopher and theologian. He specializes in Buddhism, Whiteheadian process philosophy and process theology, constructive theology, ecotheology, interfaith dialogue, and spirituality in an age of consumerism. His current interest is "to see how these myriad concerns might unfold in China".

#24671

Eli Attie

#24682

Overall Influence

Eli Attie is an Emmy-winning writer, producer, and former White House staff member. He served as Vice President Al Gore's chief White House and campaign speechwriter through Gore's concession of the 2000 presidential election, which Attie and Gore wrote together. Attie then became a longtime writer and producer on the drama series The West Wing, House, and most recently, Billions. He is also a writer and producer on Netflix's upcoming limited series Zero Day, which will star Robert De Niro, and a consulting producer on Netflix's political thriller The Diplomat.

#24672

Hugh Padgham

#24683

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Hugh Charles Padgham is an English record producer and audio engineer. He has won four Grammy Awards, for Producer of the Year and Album of the Year for 1985, Record of the Year for 1990, and Engineer of the Year for 1993. A 1992 poll in Mix magazine voted him one of the world's "Top Ten Most Influential Producers". Padgham's co-productions include hits by Phil Collins, XTC, Genesis, the Human League, Sting, and the Police. He pioneered the "gated reverb" drum sound used most famously in Collins' song "In the Air Tonight".

#24673

Adele Goldberg

#24684

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Adele Eva Goldberg is an American linguist known for her development of construction grammar and the constructionist approach in the tradition of cognitive linguistics. Early life Goldberg grew up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where her mother was a reading teacher and her father was an engineer. Her brother, Ken Y. Goldberg is chair of the industrial engineering and operations research department at the University of California, Berkeley, and her sister, Elena is a pediatrician and child psychologist in Brooklyn.

#24674

Boaz Evron

#24685

Overall Influence

1927 - 2018 (91 years)

Boaz Evron , alternatively transliterated Boas Evron was a left-wing Israeli journalist and critic. Early life and education Evron was born in Jerusalem. He attended Herzliya Hebrew High School and Hebrew University. Evron's family had lived in Palestine since the early nineteenth century; he was a great-grandson of Yoel Moshe Salomon, one of the founders of Petah Tikva.

#24675

Hutton Gibson

#24686

Overall Influence

1918 - 2020 (102 years)

Hutton Peter Gibson was an American writer on sedevacantism, a World War II veteran, the 1968 Jeopardy! grand champion and the father of 11 children, one of whom is the actor and director Mel Gibson.

#24676

Lisa Miller

#24687

Overall Influence

Lisa Jane Miller is an American professor, researcher and clinical psychologist, best known as a research scholar on spirituality in psychology. Miller is a tenured Full Professor at Columbia University, Teachers College in the Clinical Psychology Program and Founder of the Spirituality Mind Body Institute. Miller's published science on spirituality in renewal from addiction, depression and struggle has been reported in articles focusing on her research in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, as well as in television interviews and podcasts.

#24677

Mike Singletary

#24688

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Michael Singletary , nicknamed "Samurai Mike", is an American former football player and coach. He played as a linebacker for the Chicago Bears of the National Football League . After playing college football for the Baylor Bears, Singletary was selected by the Bears in the second round of the 1981 NFL Draft and was known as "the Heart of the Defense" for their Monsters of the Midway defense in the mid-1980s. He was part of their Super Bowl XX championship team that beat the New England Patriots. Singletary was inducted into the Texas Sports Hall of Fame in 1995 and into the Pro Football Hall ...

#24678

Boris Uspenskij

Boris Uspenskij

#24689

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Boris Andreevich Uspenskij is a Russian linguist, philologist, semiotician, historian of culture. Biography Uspenskij graduated from Moscow University in 1960. He delivered lectures in Moscow until 1982, but later moved on to work in Harvard University, Cornell University, Vienna University, and the University of Graz. Full professor of Russian literature at the Naples Eastern University, he was elected to many scholarly societies and academies of Europe.

#24679

Gheorghe Benga

#24690

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Gheorghe Benga is a Romanian physician and molecular biologist. He is professor and chairman in the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology of the Iuliu Hațieganu University of Medicine and Pharmacy in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, and a titular member of the Romanian Academy.

#24680

Deepa Kumar

#24691

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Deepa Kumar is an Indian American scholar and activist. She is a professor of Journalism and Media Studies at Rutgers University. Kumar has been referred to by the Media Education Foundation as “one of the nation’s foremost scholars on Islamophobia" and by the New York Times as "a world-renowned scholar of Islamophobia and race." She is a leader in the Rutgers faculty union, the AAUP-AFT. When she was president, the union fought for gender and race equity, and in 2019 won a contract that AFT president, Randi Weingarten, said “will inspire higher education professionals across [the] country to ...

#24681

Mike Martz

#24692

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Michael Martz is an American football coach. Best known for his coaching tenure with the St. Louis Rams of the National Football League , he served as the offensive coordinator for the Rams' Greatest Show on Turf offense in 1999 that led the franchise to its first Super Bowl title in Super Bowl XXXIV. Martz subsequently served as the head coach of the Rams from 2000 to 2005, where his teams reached the playoffs four times, won two division titles, and achieved a franchise-best 14–2 record in 2001 en route to an appearance in Super Bowl XXXVI.

#24682

Rajan Hoole

#24693

Overall Influence

Michael Richard Ratnarajan Hoole is a Sri Lankan Tamil mathematician, academic and human rights activist. He was one of the founders of University Teachers for Human Rights which documented human rights abuses during the Sri Lankan Civil War.

#24683

Mike Richardson

Mike Richardson

#24694

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Mike Richardson is an American publisher, writer, and producer. In 1986, he founded Dark Horse Comics, an international publishing house located in Milwaukie, Oregon. Richardson is also the founder and President of the Things From Another World retail chain and president of Dark Horse Entertainment, which has developed and produced numerous projects for film and television based on Dark Horse properties or licensed properties.

#24684

Jon Dybdahl

#24695

Overall Influence

Jon L. Dybdahl is a professor of theology and a college administrator. Inaugurated in 2002, he is the immediate past president of Walla Walla University in College Place, Washington. In 2006, he announced his retirement from that position, effective the end of the 2005–2006 academic year.

#24685

Moty Heiblum

#24696

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Mordehai "Moty" Heiblum is an Israeli electrical engineer and condensed matter physicist, known for his research in mesoscopic physics. Biography Moty Heiblum was born and raised in Holon. His mother was the only Holocaust survivor in her immediate family, and most of his father's family perished in the Holocaust. From 1967 to 1971 Moty Heiblum served in the Israeli Defense Force in the IDF Communications Corps and was an instructor at the IDF Air Force Technical School. Heiblum graduated in electrical engineering from the Technion with a bachelor's degree in 1973 and from Carnegie-Mellon University with a master's degree in 1974.

#24686

Bob Hoskins

#24697

Overall Influence

1942 - 2014 (72 years)

Robert William Hoskins was an English actor and film director. Known for his intense but sensitive portrayals of "tough guy" characters, he began his career on stage before making his screen breakthrough playing Arthur Parker on the 1978 BBC television serial Pennies from Heaven, which earned him the first of four BAFTA Award nominations. He subsequently played acclaimed lead roles in the films The Long Good Friday , Mona Lisa , Who Framed Roger Rabbit , and Mermaids .

#24687

T. Ryan Gregory

#24698

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

T. Ryan Gregory is a Canadian evolutionary biologist and genome biologist and a Professor of the Department of Integrative Biology and the Division of Genomic Diversity within the Biodiversity Institute of Ontario at the University of Guelph in Guelph, Ontario, Canada.

#24688

Kenneth Koedinger

#24699

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Kenneth R. Koedinger is a professor of human–computer interaction and psychology at Carnegie Mellon University. He is the founding and current director of the Pittsburgh Science of Learning Center. He is widely known for his role in the development of the Cognitive Tutor software. He is also widely published in cognitive psychology, intelligent tutoring systems, and educational data mining, and his research group has repeatedly won "Best Paper" awards at scientific conferences in those areas, such as the EDM2008 Best Paper, ITS2006 Best Paper, ITS2004 Best Paper, and ITS2000 Best Paper.

#24689

Jeffrey Long

#24700

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Jeffrey Long is an American author and researcher into the phenomenon of near-death experiences . A physician by training, Long practices radiation oncology at a hospital in Louisiana. Long is the author of Evidence of the Afterlife: The Science of Near-Death Experiences, which appeared on The New York Times Best Seller list. In 1998, he founded the Near Death Experience Research Foundation, which is concerned with documenting and researching NDEs.

#24690

Morikazu Toda

#24701

Overall Influence

1917 - 2010 (93 years)

Morikazu Toda was a Japanese physicist, best known for the discovery of the Toda lattice. His main interests were in statistical mechanics and condensed matter physics. Career After graduating from the Department of Physics, Tokyo University he became associate professor first at Keijo University and then at the Tokyo University of Education . In 1952 he was promoted professor and held subsequent positions at Chiba University, Yokohama National University, and University of the Air. In addition, he had visiting positions at São Paulo University and Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

#24691

Michael Klarman

Michael Klarman

#24702

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Michael J. Klarman is an American legal historian and scholar of constitutional law. Currently, Klarman is the Kirkland & Ellis Professor at Harvard Law School. Formerly, he was James Monroe Distinguished Professor of Law, Professor of History, and Elizabeth D. and Richard A. Merrill Research Professor at the University of Virginia School of Law.

#24692

Amit Chakma

#24703

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Amit Chakma is a university administrator who was appointed vice-chancellor of the University of Western Australia in July 2020. Previously he served as the 10th president and vice-chancellor of the University of Western Ontario from 2009 to 2019.

#24693

Peter M. Donohue

#24704

Overall Influence

Peter M. Donohue is an American academic administrator and Roman Catholic priest who was inaugurated as Villanova University's 32nd President on September 8, 2006. He had served as the Chair of the Villanova Theatre Department since 1992.

#24694

George N. Hatsopoulos

George N. Hatsopoulos

#24705

Overall Influence

1927 - 2018 (91 years)

George Nicholas Hatsopoulos was a Greek American mechanical engineer noted for his work in thermodynamics and for having founded Thermo Electron. Early life Hatsopoulos was born in Athens, Greece in 1927 and is related to the former rector of the Athens Polytechnic School, Nicolas Kitsikis. He attended Athens Polytechnic before entering MIT, where he received his Bachelor and Master of Science , Mechanical Engineer , and Doctorate of Science .

#24695

Big Daddy Kane

#24706

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Antonio Hardy , better known by his stage name Big Daddy Kane, is an American rapper, producer and actor who began his career in 1986 as a member of the Juice Crew. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential and skilled MCs in hip hop. Rolling Stone ranked his song "Ain't No Half-Steppin'" number 25 on its list of The 50 Greatest Hip-Hop Songs of All Time, calling him "a master wordsmith of rap's late-golden age and a huge influence on a generation of MCs".

#24696

Mark Hanson

#24707

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Mark S. Hanson is an American bishop who served as the third Presiding Bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Before being elected presiding bishop, he served as bishop of the Saint Paul Area Synod as well as pastor of three Minnesota congregations: Prince of Glory Lutheran Church, Minneapolis; Edina Community Lutheran Church; and University Lutheran Church of Hope in Minneapolis. In addition to serving as Presiding Bishop, Hanson was the 11th President of the Lutheran World Federation.

#24697

Merlin Mann

#24708

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Merlin Dean Mann III is an American writer, blogger, and podcaster. Early life and education Mann was born Merlin Dean Mann III on November 26, 1966, in Cincinnati, Ohio. Mann received a B.A. from New College of Florida.

#24698

Walter Shapiro

#24709

Overall Influence

Walter Shapiro is an American journalist, writer and columnist. Early life and education Shapiro was born in New York City and was raised in Norwalk, Connecticut. He graduated from Brien McMahon High School in 1965.

#24699

Daniel Bromley

#24710

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Daniel W. Bromley is an economist, the former Anderson-Bascom Professor of applied economics at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and since 2009, Emeritus Professor. His research in institutional economics explains the foundations of property rights, natural resources and the environment; and economic development. He has been editor of the journal Land Economics since 1974.

#24700

Samuel G. Armistead

#24711

Overall Influence

1927 - 2013 (86 years)

Samuel Gordon Armistead was an American ethnographer, linguist, folklorist, historian, literary critic and professor of Spanish. He is considered one of the most notable Hispanist scholars of the second half of the 20th and early 21st century.

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