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

#25851

Antony Davies

#25862

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Antony Davies is an American economist, speaker, and author. He is an associate professor of economics at Duquesne University and the Milton Friedman Distinguished Fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education.

#25852

Luis Radford

#25863

Overall Influence

Luis Radford is professor at the School of Education Sciences at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. His research interests cover both theoretical and practical aspects of mathematics thinking, teaching, and learning. His current research draws on Lev Vygotsky's historical-cultural school of thought, as well as Evald Ilyenkov's epistemology, in a conceptual framework influenced by Emmanuel Levinas and Mikhail Bakhtin, leading to a non-utilitarian and a non-instrumentalist conception of the classroom and education.

#25853

Jacqueline Suthren Hirst

#25864

Overall Influence

Jacqueline G. Suthren Hirst or Jackie Hirst is a senior lecturer in comparative religion and South Asian studies at Manchester University. She has an MA and PhD from Cambridge University and is a qualified teacher, and taught religious education in a school for five years. She was a senior lecturer at Homerton College, training teachers to teach religious education, before moving to Manchester in 1994.

#25854

Anton Treuer

#25865

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Anton Treuer is an American academic and author specializing in the Ojibwe language and American Indian studies. He is professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University, Minnesota and a 2008 Guggenheim Fellow.

#25855

Judith Treas

#25866

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Judith K. Treas is an American sociologist. She is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for Demographic and Social Analysis at the University of California, Irvine. Treas is recognized for her research on gender, family, inequality, and the life course.

#25856

Henry Winkler

#25867

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Henry Franklin Winkler is an American actor, comedian, author, producer, and director. Widely known as Arthur "Fonzie" Fonzarelli on the American television series Happy Days, Winkler has distinguished himself as a character actor for roles on stage and screen. Winkler's accolades include three Emmy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and two Critics Choice Awards.

#25857

Pavel Gusterin

#25868

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Pavel Vyacheslavovich Gusterin is a Russian orientalist. Education Pavel Gusterin is a graduate of the Tver State University , the Institute of Asian and African Countries at the Moscow State University named after Mikhail Vasilyevich Lomonosov , and the Diplomatic Academy of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation .

#25858

Wolfgang Hackbusch

Wolfgang Hackbusch

#25869

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Wolfgang Hackbusch is a German mathematician, known for his pioneering research in multigrid methods and later hierarchical matrices, a concept generalizing the fast multipole method. He was a professor at the University of Kiel and is currently one of the directors of the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences in Leipzig.

#25859

Nina Papavasiliou

Nina Papavasiliou

#25870

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Nina Papavasiliou is an immunologist and Helmholtz Professor in the Division of Immune Diversity at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, Germany. She is also an adjunct professor at the Rockefeller University, where she was previously associate professor and head of the Laboratory of Lymphocyte Biology. She is best known for her work in the fields of DNA and RNA editing.

#25860

Zabihollah Safa

Zabihollah Safa

#25871

Overall Influence

1911 - 1999 (88 years)

Zabihollah Safa was a scholar and professor Emeritus of Iranian Studies at the University of Tehran. His main contribution to the field of Iranian studies is seen in his seminal and comprehensive works on the history of Persian literature. He was also a regular contributor to the Encyclopaedia Iranica.

#25861

Casey B. Mulligan

#25872

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Casey B. Mulligan is an American economist and author. He is a Professor in Economics at the University of Chicago. He served as chief economist for the Council of Economic Advisers in the Trump Administration from September 6, 2018 to August 2019.

#25862

Urs Jaeggi

#25873

Overall Influence

1931 - 2021 (90 years)

Urs Jaeggi was a Swiss sociologist, painter, and author from Solothurn, Switzerland. From 1964 to 1993, he was a Professor of Sociology and Social Philosophy in Bern, Bochum, New York, and Berlin. He published numerous novels, short stories, essays as well as scientific books. He won the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize in 1981.

#25863

Richard Pildes

#25874

Overall Influence

Richard H. Pildes is the Sudler Family Professor of Constitutional Law at the New York University School of Law and a leading expert on constitutional law, the Supreme Court, the system of government in the United States, and legal issues concerning the structure of democracy, including election law. His scholarship focuses on public law and legal issues affecting democracy.

#25864

Richard Blahut

#25875

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Richard Blahut , former chair of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, is best known for his work in information theory . He received his PhD Electrical Engineering from Cornell University in 1972.

#25865

Teppo Felin

#25876

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Teppo Felin is the Douglas D. Anderson Professor of Strategy & Entrepreneurship at the Huntsman School of Business at Utah State University. He is also the Founding Director of the Institute for Interdisciplinary Study. From 2013 to 2021, Felin was Professor of Strategy at the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford. His current research focuses on cognition, rationality, perception, organizational economics, markets and strategy.

#25866

George A. Kennedy

#25877

Overall Influence

1928 - 2022 (94 years)

George Alexander Kennedy was an American scholar of classical rhetoric and literature. Biography George Alexander Kennedy was born in Hartford, Connecticut on November 26, 1928. He received his Ph.D. in classics from Harvard University in 1954 with a dissertation entitled "Prolegomena and Commentary to Quintilian VIII ". Kennedy taught classics, comparative literature, and rhetoric at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for twenty-eight years. He retired as George L. Paddison professor of classics. He received a Guggenheim fellowship in 1959. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society.

#25867

Mona Baker

#25878

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Mona Baker is a professor of translation studies and Director of the Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies at the University of Manchester in England. Career Baker studied at the American University in Cairo, where she gained a BA in English and Comparative Literature. Afterwards she studied applied linguistics at the University of Birmingham, obtaining an MA. In 1995 she moved to the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology where she became a professor in 1997. She currently holds the Chair in Translation Studies.

#25868

Sandra Dawson

#25879

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Dame Sandra June Noble Dawson, is a British social scientist and academic. She was Master of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge from 1999 to 2009, making her the first woman to be master of a formerly all male College at the University of Cambridge. She was the inaugural KPMG Professor of Management Studies at the Cambridge Judge Business School.

#25869

Owen Chadwick

#25880

Overall Influence

1916 - 2015 (99 years)

William Owen Chadwick was a British Anglican priest, academic, rugby international, writer and prominent historian of Christianity. As a leading academic, Chadwick became Dixie Professor of Ecclesiastical History in 1958, serving until 1968, and from 1968 to 1983 was Regius Professor of History. Chadwick was elected master of Selwyn College, Cambridge, and served from 1956 to 1983.

#25870

Yoelle Maarek

#25881

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Yoelle Maarek is a Tunisian-born Israeli computer scientist. She is the Vice President of Worldwide Research at Amazon, responsible for Amazon's Alexa Shopping Research. Maarek is a researcher in the field of search engines and data mining, and a former vice president at Yahoo! and Director of Yahoo! in Israel and in India. Maarek was the first engineer of Google Israel and established the first development center in Haifa in 2006.

#25871

Chico Buarque

#25882

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Francisco Buarque de Hollanda , popularly known simply as Chico Buarque, is a Brazilian singer-songwriter, guitarist, composer, playwright, writer, and poet. He is best known for his music, which often includes social, economic, and cultural reflections on Brazil.

#25872

Myroslav Popovych

#25883

Overall Influence

1930 - 2018 (88 years)

Myroslav Popovych was a Ukrainian philosopher, DA, professor, Academician of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. Biography Popovych was born on 12 April 1930 in Zhytomyr, in the Ukrainian SSR of the Soviet Union . In 1953 he graduated from the Taras Shevchenko University, philosophy department. In 2001 he became the director of the Skovoroda Institute of Philosophy of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. In 2003 he was elected Academician of the Ukrainian National Academy of Sciences.

#25873

Bjørn Nørgaard

#25884

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Bjørn Nørgaard is a Danish artist who has been active in a variety of fields. He has significantly influenced the art scene in Denmark both through his "happenings" and his sculptures in Danish cities. Although he has specialized in sculpture since 1970, his greatest achievement is perhaps his work in designing Queen Margrethe II's tapestries. Nørgaard was a professor at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts from 1985 to 1994. His main workshop is in the village of Bissinge on the island of Møn.

#25874

Ernst Bamberg

#25885

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Ernst Bamberg is a German biophysicist and director emeritus of the Department of Biophysical Chemistry at the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics. Career Bamberg received his PhD in physical chemistry from the University of Basel in 1971, and a habilitation in biophysical chemistry from the University of Konstanz in 1976. He was a Heisenberg fellow from 1979 to 1983, when he became head of an independent working group at the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics in Frankfurt/Main. In 1988, he became an adjunct professor at Frankfurt University, which named him a full professor of biophysical chemistry in 1993, and professor emeritus in 2009.

#25875

Gertrud Höhler

#25886

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Gertrud Höhler is a German literary scholar, management consultant and political consultant. Early life Höhler was born in Wuppertal, Germany, and is the second of four children of parish priest Heinrich Höhler and his wife Helene, daughter of the theologian Fritz Horn. The German cardiologist Mia Helene Höhler was her sister; the German architect Ernst Höhler was her brother.

#25876

Norman H. Anderson

#25887

Overall Influence

1925 - Present (101 years)

Norman Henry Anderson was an American social psychologist and the founder of Information integration theory. Anderson was a Distinguished Professor Emeritus at the University of California, San Diego, where he was one of three founders of the Department of Psychology. He received a BS in 1946 and an MS in 1949 from the University of Chicago, and an MS in 1955 and a PhD in 1956 from the University of Wisconsin, with a thesis on Effect of First-order Conditional Probability in a Two-choice Learning Situation. Anderson also taught at The University of California, Los Angeles during the 1960...

#25877

Alain Viala

#25888

Overall Influence

1947 - 2021 (74 years)

Alain Viala was a sociologist and literature scholar, and a professor of French literature at the University of Oxford and at the University of Paris III and a fellow of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. He worked mainly on the French literature of the 17th century.

#25878

Aris Konstantinidis

#25889

Overall Influence

1913 - 1993 (80 years)

Aris Konstantinidis was a Greek modernist architect. Aris Konstantinidis was born in Athens and studied architecture at the Technical University of Munich from 1931 to 1936, where he came into contact with the Modern Movement in architecture. He returned to Greece in 1936 and worked for the Town Planning Department of the city of Athens and for the Ministry of Public Works. He was appointed head of the Workers Housing Organisation from 1955 to 1975 and from 1957 to 1967 of the Technical Service of the Greek National Tourism Organisation, where he planned and oversaw the construction of a series of workers' houses and Xenia hotels.

#25879

Graciela Márquez Colín

Graciela Márquez Colín

#25890

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Graciela Márquez Colín is a Mexican academic and economist. She held the position of Mexican Minister of Economy from 2018–2020, under President Andrés Manuel López Obrador. As of January 2021, she holds the position of Vice President of the Governing Board of the National Institute of Statistics and Geography . She is set to occupy this role for an eight-year term, until December 2028. Previously she was Professor of Economic History at the El Colegio de Mexico in Mexico City where she was a full professor at the Centro de Estudios Historicos. She was also a Visiting Professor at the Univers...

#25880

Brian Cox

#25891

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Brian Denis Cox is a Scottish actor. A classically trained Shakespearean actor, he is known for leading performances on stage and television, as well as supporting roles in film. His numerous accolades include two Laurence Olivier Awards, a Primetime Emmy Award, and a Golden Globe Award as well as a nomination for a British Academy Television Award. In 2003, he was appointed to the Order of the British Empire at the rank of Commander. Empire magazine awarded him the Empire Icon Award in 2006, and the UK Film Council named him one of the top 10 powerful British film stars in Hollywood in 2007...

#25881

Lloyd Gardner

#25892

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (92 years)

Lloyd C. Gardner is an American historian, a member of the "Wisconsin School" of diplomatic history along with Walter LaFeber and Thomas J. McCormick. He was educated at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

#25882

William L. Reese

#25893

Overall Influence

1921 - 2017 (96 years)

William L. Reese was a faculty member in the Department of Philosophy, State University of New York at Albany. He was born in Jefferson City, Missouri. Reese gained his PhD from the University of Chicago in 1947. From 1967 to 1999 he was Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Albany, and since 1999 has been professor emeritus and research professor in philosophy at the university.

#25883

Elizabeth Coleman

#25894

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Elizabeth Coleman was the ninth president of Bennington College from 1987 to 2013. Coleman also served as the founding Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at The New School for Social Research.

#25884

John Feldmann

#25895

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

John William Feldmann is an American musician and record producer. He serves as the lead singer/guitarist of the punk rock band Goldfinger. Early life Feldmann grew up in Saratoga, California. He started writing songs around the age of 12. Around that time, he met the band Social Distortion, and was inspired to be like them.

#25885

Elizabeth J. Perry

#25896

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Elizabeth J. Perry, FBA is an American scholar of Chinese politics and history at Harvard University, where she is the Henry Rosovsky Professor of Government and Director of the Harvard-Yenching Institute. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a corresponding fellow of the British Academy, a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and served as Director of Harvard's Fairbank Center for East Asian Research from 1999 to 2003 and as president of the Association for Asian Studies in 2007.

#25886

Adrian Martin

#25897

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Adrian Martin is an Australian film and arts critic. He now lives in Malgrat de Mar in Spain. He is Adjunct Associate Professor in Film Culture and Theory at Monash University. His work has appeared in many magazines, journals and newspapers around the world, and has been translated into over twenty languages and has regular columns in the Dutch De Filmkrant and in Caiman: Cuadernos de cine.

#25887

Stathis Psillos

#25898

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Stathis Psillos is a Greek philosopher of science. He is Professor of Philosophy of Science and Metaphysics at the University of Athens, Greece and a member of the Rotman Institute of Philosophy of the University of Western Ontario. In 2013–15, he held the Rotman Canada Research Chair in Philosophy of Science at the University of Western Ontario, Canada.

#25888

August Coppola

#25899

Overall Influence

1934 - 2009 (75 years)

August Floyd Coppola was an American academic, author, film executive, and advocate for the arts. He was the brother of director Francis Ford Coppola and actress Talia Shire, and the father of actor Nicolas Cage, radio DJ Marc Coppola and director Christopher Coppola.

#25889

Edward C. Green

#25900

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Edward C. Green is an American medical anthropologist working in public health and development. He was a senior research scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health and served as senior research scientist at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies for eight years, the last three years as director of the AIDS Prevention Project. He was later affiliated with the Department of Population and Reproductive Health at Johns Hopkins University and the George Washington University as research professor . He was appointed to serve as a member of the Presidential Advisory Counci...

#25890

Mauno Koivisto

#25901

Overall Influence

1923 - 2017 (94 years)

Mauno Henrik Koivisto was a Finnish politician who served as the ninth president of Finland from 1982 to 1994. He also served as the country's prime minister twice, from 1968 to 1970 and again from 1979 to 1982. He was also the first member of the Social Democratic Party to be elected as President of Finland.

#25891

Jung Mo Sung

#25902

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Jung Mo Sung is a Roman Catholic lay theologian, writer and lecturer trained in theology, ethics, and education. He was born in South Korea, and raised in Brazil where he lives today. Sung is currently a professor in the graduate program of Religious Studies at the Methodist University of São Paulo, in the area of Liberation Theology and Economy Theological critique of neoliberalism.

#25892

Jürgen Kurths

#25903

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Jürgen Kurths is a German physicist and mathematician. He is senior advisor in the research department Complexity Sciences of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, a Professor of Nonlinear Dynamics at the Institute of Physics at the Humboldt University, Berlin, and a 6th-century chair for Complex Systems Biology at the Institute for Complex Systems and Mathematical Biology at Kings College, Aberdeen University . His research is mainly concerned with nonlinear physics and complex systems sciences and their applications to challenging problems in Earth system, physiology, systems ...

#25893

Walter Gautschi

#25904

Overall Influence

1927 - Present (99 years)

Walter Gautschi is a Swiss-born American mathematician, writer and professor emeritus of Computer science and Mathematics at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. He is primarily known for his contributions to numerical analysis and has authored over 200 papers in his area and published four books.

#25894

Merfyn Jones

#25905

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

R. Merfyn Jones CBE is a Welsh historian and broadcaster, was vice-chancellor of Bangor University and a governor of the BBC . He grew up and still lives in Gwynedd, Wales. Academic career Jones has specialized as an historian in modern and contemporary Welsh history, and has made several TV documentaries in this area. He has a particular interest is the history of the process of devolution in Wales.

#25895

Ernst Messerschmid

Ernst Messerschmid

#25906

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Ernst Willi Messerschmid is a German physicist and former astronaut. Born in Reutlingen, Germany, Messerschmid finished the Technisches Gymnasium in Stuttgart in 1965. After two years of military service he studied physics at the University of Tübingen and Bonn, receiving a Diplom degree in 1972 and doctorate in 1976. From 1970 to 1975 he was also a visiting scientist at the CERN in Geneva, working on proton beams in accelerators and plasmas. From 1975 to 1976 he worked at the University of Freiburg and the Brookhaven National Laboratory , In 1977, he joined DESY in Hamburg to work on the bea...

#25896

Leonard Eisenbud

#25907

Overall Influence

1913 - 2004 (91 years)

Leonard Eisenbud was an American theoretical physicist. Eisenbud earned his bachelor's degree at Union College in Schenectady, New York in 1935. He spent the year 1940/1941 at the Institute for Advanced Study. During World War II he worked on radar at the Radiation Laboratory at MIT. After the war, he earned his doctorate at Princeton University in 1948 under Eugene Wigner.

#25897

Anna Aizer

#25908

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Anna Aizer is a labor and health economist, who currently serves as the Maurice R. Greenberg Professor of Economics at Brown University where she is also a Faculty Associate at the Population Studies and Training Center. Her research focuses on child health and well-being, in particular the effect of societal factors and social issues on children's health.

#25898

Sebastian von Hoerner

#25909

Overall Influence

1919 - 2003 (84 years)

Sebastian Rudolf Karl von Hoerner was a German astrophysicist and radio astronomer. He was born in Görlitz, Lower Silesia. During WW II, Von Hoerner served in the German Army on the Eastern Front. A bullet struck a pair of binoculars he was wearing on a strap around his neck, ricocheted up and blinded him in one eye. He was sent to Germany to recover and was there when the Front collapsed. After the end of World War II he studied physics at University of Göttingen. He obtained his doctorate at the same university in 1951 as Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker. Together they conducted simulations that studied the formation of stars and globular clusters.

#25899

Anita Lo

#25910

Overall Influence

Anita Lo is an American chef and restaurateur. In 2001, she was named by Food & Wine magazine one of ten "Best New Chefs in America". Biography Early life Anita Lo, a second-generation Malaysian American, grew up in Birmingham, Michigan.

#25900

Robert V. Levine

#25911

Overall Influence

1945 - 2019 (74 years)

Robert Victor Levine, Ph.D. was an American psychologist. Levine was Professor of Psychology at California State University, Fresno, a social psychology writer, speaker, and consultant. He was also the former Associate Dean of the College of Science and Mathematics at Fresno.

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