The Most Influential People Across History
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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List of the most influential people
#26101
Svetlana Jitomirskaya
#26112
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Svetlana Yakovlevna Jitomirskaya is a Soviet-born American mathematician working on dynamical systems and mathematical physics. She is a distinguished professor of mathematics at Georgia Tech and UC Irvine. She is best known for solving the ten martini problem along with mathematician Artur Avila.
Go to Profile#26102
Jan Paulsson
#26113
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Jan Paulsson is a Swedish scholar and practitioner in the area of international arbitration. Early life Paulsson received his A.B. from Harvard University in 1971, his J.D. from Yale Law School in 1975, where he was an editor of the Yale Law Journal, and a Diplôme d’etudes supérieurs spécialisées from the University of Paris in 1977.
Go to Profile#26103
Tim Raines
#26114
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Timothy Raines Sr. , nicknamed "Rock", is an American professional baseball coach and former player. He played as a left fielder in Major League Baseball for six teams from 1979 to 2002 and was best known for his 13 seasons with the Montreal Expos. A seven-time All-Star, four-time stolen base champion, and National League batting champion, Raines is regarded as one of the best leadoff hitters and baserunners in baseball history. In 2013, Raines began working in the Toronto Blue Jays organization as a roving outfield and baserunning instructor. He was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in ...
Go to Profile#26104
Cercops
#26115
Overall Influence
Cercops was one of the oldest Orphic poets. He was called a Pythagorean by Clement of Alexandria. Cicero, was said by Epigenes of Alexandria to have been the author of an Orphic epic poem entitled the "Descent to Hades", which seems to have been extant in the Alexandrian period. Others attribute this work to Prodicus of Samos, or Herodicus of Perinthus, or Orpheus of Camarina.
Go to Profile#26105
John C. Gittins
#26116
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
John Charles Gittins is a researcher in applied probability and operations research, who is a professor and Emeritus Fellow at Keble College, Oxford University. He is renowned as the developer of the "Gittins index", which is used for sequential decision-making, especially in research and development in the pharmaceutical industry. He has research interests in applied probability, decision analysis and optimal decisions, including optimal stopping and stochastic optimization.
Go to Profile#26106
Greer Garson
#26117
Overall Influence
1904 - 1996 (92 years)
Eileen Evelyn Greer Garson was a British-American actress and singer. She was a major star at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer who became popular during the Second World War for her portrayal of strong women on the homefront; listed by the Motion Picture Herald as one of America's top-10 box office draws from 1942 to 1946.
Go to Profile#26107
Robert M. Miura
#26118
Overall Influence
1938 - 2018 (80 years)
Robert M. Miura was a Distinguished Professor of Mathematical Sciences and of Biomedical Engineering at New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark, New Jersey. He was formerly a professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
Go to Profile#26108
Richard Blumenthal
#26119
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Richard Blumenthal is an American lawyer and politician who is the senior United States senator from Connecticut, a seat he has held since 2011. A member of the Democratic Party, he is one of the wealthiest members of the Senate, with a net worth over $100 million. He was Attorney General of Connecticut from 1991 to 2011.
Go to Profile#26109
Greville G Corbett
#26120
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Greville G. Corbett is Distinguished Professor of Linguistics at the University of Surrey and founder member of the Surrey Morphology Group. Biography He was educated at the University of Birmingham where he was awarded a BA, MA and PhD. He joined the University of Surrey in 1974. He has been a Fellow of the British Academy since 1997 and is an Academician of the Academy of Social Sciences, a Member of the Academia Europaea and an Honorary Member of the Linguistic Society of America. As an author, he is widely held in libraries worldwide. In 2017, he signed the Declaration on the Common Langu...
Go to Profile#26110
Victor Cha
#26121
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Victor D. Cha is an American academic, author and former national foreign policy advisor. He is a former Director for Asian Affairs in the White House's National Security Council, with responsibility for Japan, North and South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand. He was George W. Bush's top advisor on North Korean affairs. He currently holds the D. S. Song-Korea Foundation Chair in Asian Studies and is the Director of the Asian Studies program in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Cha is also senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studi...
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Mackubin Thomas Owens
#26122
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (81 years)
Mackubin Thomas Owens is a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. From 2015 until 2018, he served as dean of academic affairs at the Institute of World Politics. He was previously the associate dean of academics for electives and directed research and professor of strategy and force planning for the Naval War College in the U.S., as well as a contributing editor to National Review.
Go to Profile#26112
Dali Yang
#26123
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Dali L. Yang is an American political scientist and sinologist. He is the William Claude Reavis Professor in the Department of Political Science and Senior Advisor to the President and Provost on Global Initiatives at The University of Chicago. Between 2010 and 2016, he was the founding Faculty Director of the University of Chicago Center in Beijing, a university-wide initiative to strengthen exchanges and collaboration with Chinese academic institutions. He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. He is a member of the Committee of 100, a member of the Na...
Go to Profile#26113
Kishore Kunal
#26124
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Kishore Kunal is a former officer of the Indian Police Service from the state of Bihar, India. During his police career, he was appointed as the Officer on Special Duty by the prime minister V. P. Singh to mediate between the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Babri Masjid Action Committee on the Ayodhya dispute. He continued to serve in this position during the premierships of Chandra Sekhar and P. V. Narasimha Rao.
Go to Profile#26114
Günter Bischof
#26125
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Günter Bischof is an Austrian-American historian and university professor. A specialist in 20th century diplomatic history, and a graduate of University of New Orleans, Innsbruck University and Harvard University, he currently serves as a Marshall Plan Professor of History at the University of New Orleans. He also serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Austrian-American History.
Go to Profile#26115
Levon Aronian
#26126
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (44 years)
Levon Grigori Aronian is an Armenian-American chess grandmaster. A chess prodigy, he earned the title of grandmaster in 2000, at age 17. He is a former world rapid and blitz champion and has held the No. 2 position in the March 2014 FIDE world chess rankings with a rating of 2830, becoming the fourth highest-rated player in history.
Go to Profile#26116
John Barnes
#26127
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
John Barnes is an American science fiction author. Writing Two of his novels, The Sky So Big and Black and The Duke of Uranium have been reviewed as having content appropriate for a young adult readership, comparing favorably to Robert A. Heinlein's "juvenile" novels. He has contributed to the Internet Evolution website.
Go to Profile#26117
Varun Grover
#26128
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Varun Grover is an Indian writer, comedian, poet and filmmaker. He won the award for Best Lyricist at the 63rd National Film Awards in 2015. He is also the co-creator of Aisi Taisi Democracy, a political satire show. His debut feature All India Rank was the closing film at the 52nd IFFR.
Go to Profile#26118
Bob Jenkins
#26129
Overall Influence
1947 - 2021 (74 years)
Robert Francis Jenkins was an American television and radio sports announcer, primarily calling Indy car and NASCAR telecasts for ESPN/ABC and later Versus/NBCSN. Jenkins was the radio "Voice of the Indianapolis 500" on the IMS Radio Network from 1990 to 1998, then held the same role on ABC Sports television from 1999 to 2001.
Go to Profile#26119
Brendan Shanahan
#26130
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Brendan Frederick Shanahan is a Canadian professional ice hockey executive and former player who currently serves as the president and alternate governor for the Toronto Maple Leafs, having previously served as the director of player safety for the National Hockey League . Originally drafted by the New Jersey Devils second overall in the 1987 NHL Entry Draft, Shanahan played in the NHL with the New Jersey Devils , St. Louis Blues, Hartford Whalers, Detroit Red Wings, and New York Rangers.
Go to Profile#26120
Thomas B. Fitzpatrick
#26131
Overall Influence
1919 - 2003 (84 years)
Thomas B. Fitzpatrick was an American dermatologist. He was Chairman of the Department of Dermatology at Harvard Medical School and Chief of the Massachusetts General Hospital Dermatology Service from 1959 to 1987. He has been described as "the father of modern academic dermatology" and as "the most influential dermatologist of the last 100 years", in part because he trained so many of the leaders in the field.
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John Gaventa
#26132
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
John Gaventa is currently the director of research at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex, where he has been a Fellow since 1996. From 2011 to 2014, he served as the director of the Coady International Institute and vice-president of International Development at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada.
Go to Profile#26122
Gregory Lip
#26133
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Gregory Lip is a clinical researcher and Price-Evans Chair of Cardiovascular Medicine, at the University of Liverpool. He is Director of the Liverpool Centre for Cardiovascular Science at the University of Liverpool, Liverpool John Moores University and Liverpool Heart & Chest Hospital.
Go to Profile#26123
R. J. Berry
#26134
Overall Influence
1934 - 2018 (84 years)
Robert James "Sam" Berry was a British geneticist, naturalist and Christian theorist. He was professor of genetics at University College London between 1974 and 2000. Before that he was a lecturer in genetics at The Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine in London. He was president from 1983 to 1986 of the Linnean Society, the British Ecological Society and the European Ecological Federation. As a Christian, Berry spoke out in favour of theistic evolution, served as a lay member of the Church of England's General Synod and as president of Christians in Science. He was a member of the Board of Governors of Monkton Combe School from 1979 to 1991.
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Franklin Southworth
#26135
Overall Influence
1929 - Present (97 years)
Franklin C. Southworth is an American linguist and Professor Emeritus of South Asian linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania. Publications South Asia: Dravidian linguistic history in The Encyclopedia of Global Human Migration Rice in Dravidian Proto-Dravidian AgricultureLinguistic archaeology of South Asia Prehistoric implications of the Dravidian element in the NIA lexicon, with special reference to Marathi Reconstructing social context from language: Indo-Aryan and Dravidian prehistory South Asian emblematic gestures The reconstruction of prehistoric South Asian language contact Lingu...
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Sönke Neitzel
#26136
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Sönke Neitzel is a German historian who has written extensively about the Second World War. He is editor of the journal German History in the 20th Century and has written several books such as Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing and Dying; The Secret Second World War Tapes of German POWs based on recordings of German POWs held at Trent Park which he wrote with Harald Welzer. Neitzel edited the book Tapping Hitler's Generals .
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Don Lavoie
#26137
Overall Influence
1951 - 2001 (50 years)
Donald Charles Lavoie was an American economist of the Austrian School. He was influenced by Friedrich Hayek, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Michael Polanyi and Ludwig Lachmann. He wrote two books on the problem of economic calculation. His first book on this subject was Rivalry and Central Planning . This book stressed the importance of the process of competitive rivalry in markets. His second book was National Economic Planning: What Is Left? . This book dealt with the problem of non-comprehensive planning.
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Scott Storch
#26138
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Scott Spencer Storch is an American record producer and songwriter. Storch began his career as a keyboardist for Philadelphia-based hip hop band the Roots; his first album with the group was Organix . In 1999, Storch provided the keyboard riff and co-produced Dr. Dre's hit comeback single, "Still D.R.E.". He expanded to produce other records into the 2000s including Beyoncé's "Baby Boy" , "Me, Myself and I", and "Naughty Girl", Terror Squad's "Lean Back", and 50 Cent's "Candy Shop" and "Just a Lil Bit", Mario's "Let Me Love You" and Chris Brown's "Run It!", among others. Storch has been nomin...
Go to Profile#26128
Haynes Miller
#26139
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Haynes Robert Miller is an American mathematician specializing in algebraic topology. Miller completed his undergraduate study at Harvard University and earned his PhD in 1974 under the supervision of John Coleman Moore at Princeton University with thesis Some Algebraic Aspects of the Adams–Novikov Spectral Sequence. After his PhD, he became an assistant professor at Harvard and at Northwestern University, from 1977 at the University of Washington, and from 1984 a professor at the University of Notre Dame. Since 1986 he is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . From 1992 t...
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Kao Kalia Yang
#26140
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Kao Kalia Yang is a Hmong American writer and author of The Latehomecomer: A Hmong Family Memoir from Coffee House Press and The Song Poet from Metropolitan Press. Her work has appeared in the Paj Ntaub Voice Hmong literary journal, "Waterstone~Review," and other publications. She is a contributing writer to On Being's Public Theology Reimagined blog. Additionally, Yang wrote the lyric documentary, The Place Where We Were Born. Yang currently resides in St. Paul, Minnesota.
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Olivier Faugeras
#26141
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Olivier Dominique Faugeras is a French computer scientist and director of research at Inria Sophia Antipolis. He is a member of the French Academy of Sciences and the French Academy of Technologies, and recipient of the 2014 Okawa Prize for his pioneering contributions to computer vision and computational neuroscience.
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Francisca Oboh Ikuenobe
#26142
Overall Influence
Francisca Oboh-Ikuenobe is a geologist from Ubiaja in Esan South East Local Government Area of Edo State. She was born August 1962 She specialises in palynology and sedimentology, and is Professor of Geology in the Department of Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering, and Associate Dean of Academic Affairs in the College of Engineering and Computing, Missouri University of Science and Technology.
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Hironari Miyazawa
#26143
Overall Influence
1927 - 2023 (96 years)
was a Japanese particle and nuclear physicist, known for his work in supersymmetry, which was first proposed by Miyazawa in 1966 as a possible symmetry between mesons and baryons. Miyazawa studied physics and received his undergraduate degree in 1950 at the University of Tokyo. He joined the faculty after he received his doctorate in 1953 from the University of Tokyo, and became a full professor of physics in 1968. In 1988 he moved to the Kanagawa University and served there until 1998. He was a professor emeritus of the University of Tokyo. During these periods, he also served visiting profes...
Go to Profile#26133
Ed Droste
#26144
Overall Influence
1978 - Present (48 years)
Edward Droste is an American singer-songwriter and musician, formerly of the rock band Grizzly Bear. The group began as the solo effort of Droste with the release of 2004's Horn of Plenty, originally released on Kanine Records. All songs were written and performed by Droste. By 2005, the group expanded into a four-piece, with Droste still as a contributing songwriter. He left the group in 2020.
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Kathleen Jamie
#26145
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Kathleen Jamie FRSL is a Scottish poet and essayist. In 2021 she became Scotland's fourth Makar. Life and work Kathleen Jamie is a poet and essayist. Raised in Currie, near Edinburgh, she studied philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, publishing her first poems as an undergraduate. Her writing is rooted in Scottish landscape and culture, and ranges through travel, women's issues, archaeology and visual art. She writes in English and occasionally in Scots. Jamie's collections include The Queen of Sheba . Her 2004 collection The Tree House revealed an increasing interest in the natural world.
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Eugene P. Kennedy
#26146
Overall Influence
1919 - 2011 (92 years)
Eugene Patrick Kennedy was an American biochemist known for his work on lipid metabolism and membrane function. He attended DePaul University and then became a PhD student at the University of Chicago. From 1959 to 1993 he worked at Harvard Medical School.
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Ravi Kanbur
#26147
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Sanjiv M. Ravi Kanbur , is T.H. Lee Professor of World Affairs, International Professor of Applied Economics, and Professor of Economics at Cornell University. He worked for the World Bank for almost two decades and was the director of the World Development Report.
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Louis Leo Snyder
#26148
Overall Influence
1907 - 1993 (86 years)
Louis Leo Snyder was an American scholar, who witnessed first hand the Nazi mass rallies held from 1923 on in Germany; and wrote about them from New York in his Hitlerism: The Iron Fist in Germany published in 1932 under the pseudonym Nordicus. Snyder predicted Adolf Hitler's rise to power, Nazi alliance with Benito Mussolini, and possibly the war upon the French and the Jews. His book was the first publication of the complete NSDAP National Socialist Program in the English language.
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Dean Saunders
#26149
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Dean Nicholas Saunders is a Welsh football manager and former professional footballer. As a player, he was a striker in a career which lasted from 1982 until 2001. He played for Liverpool and Aston Villa in the 1990s, and set a new British transfer record when he joined the former from Derby County. He began at his hometown club Swansea City before also playing for Brighton, Oxford United, Bradford City, Nottingham Forest and Sheffield United as well as spells at Galatasaray and Benfica. He was capped 75 times at senior level for Wales between 1986 and 2001, scoring 22 times, making him one o...
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Alessandro Barbero
#26150
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Alessandro Barbero is an Italian historian, novelist and essayist. Barbero was born in Turin. He attended the University of Turin, where he studied literature and Medieval history. He won the 1996 Strega Prize, Italy's most distinguished literary award, for Bella vita e guerre altrui di Mr. Pyle gentiluomo. His second novel, Romanzo russo. Fiutando i futuri supplizi, has been translated into English as The Anonymous Novel. Sensing the Future Torments .
Go to Profile#26140
Paul M. Naghdi
#26151
Overall Influence
1924 - 1994 (70 years)
Paul Mansour Naghdi was a professor of mechanical engineering at University of California, Berkeley. Early life and education Paul Naghdi was born in Tehran on March 29, 1924. In 1943, in order to pursue his education, he undertook a perilous voyage to the United States, during which he helped navigate the ship. He studied mechanical engineering at Cornell University and graduated in January 1946. After a short period in the United States Army Corps of Engineers, he enrolled in the graduate program in the engineering mechanics department of the University of Michigan in the summer of 1946. He was granted U.S.
Go to Profile#26141
Mohammad-Taqi Ja'fari
#26152
Overall Influence
1923 - 1998 (75 years)
Allameh Mohammad-Taqi Ja'fari was an Iranian scholar, philosopher, intellectual, and islamic theologist. Ja'fari was a Shia philosopher. He was expert in various fields such as history, logic, metaphysics, philosophy, literature, mysticism, jurisprudence, and philosophy of science.
Go to Profile#26142
Vladimír Šverák
#26153
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Vladimír Šverák is a Czech mathematician. Since 1990, he has been a professor at the University of Minnesota. Šverák made notable contributions to calculus of variations. Šverák obtained his doctorate from the Charles University in Prague in 1986, under supervision of Jindřich Nečas. He worked on problems in the theory of non-linear elasticity. In 1992, he won an EMS Prize for producing a counterexample to a problem first posed by Charles B. Morrey, Jr. in 1950, whether rank-one convexity implies quasiconvexity. In 1994, Šverák was an Invited Speaker of the International Congress of Mathemati...
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Valentina Borok
#26154
Overall Influence
1931 - 2004 (73 years)
Valentina Mikhailovna Borok was a Soviet Ukrainian mathematician. She is mainly known for her work on partial differential equations. Life Borok was born on July 9, 1931, in Kharkiv in Ukraine , into a Jewish family. Her father, Michail Borok, was a chemist, scientist and an expert in material science. Her mother, Bella Sigal, was a well-known economist. Because of her mothers' high position at the ministry of Economics, Valentina Borok had a privileged early childhood. However, because of the political situation, her mother voluntarily resigned in 1937, and took a lower position, presumably because she knew she couldn't possibly have been spared the repressions of the late 1930s.
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Aleksandr Akhiezer
#26155
Overall Influence
1911 - 2000 (89 years)
Aleksandr Ilyich Akhiezer was a Soviet and Ukrainian theoretical physicist, known for contributions to numerous branches of theoretical physics, including quantum electrodynamics, nuclear physics, solid state physics, quantum field theory, and the theory of plasma. He was the brother of the mathematician Naum Akhiezer.
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Marc de Vries
#26156
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
M.J. de Vries , is professor of Reformational Philosophy at the Delft University of Technology. Biography Marc de Vries studied physics at the Free University of Amsterdam and graduated in 1982 on the subject: dissolving problems in physical education. In 1988 he got his promotion at the Eindhoven University of Technology on the subject: technology in physical education.
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Debashis Mukherjee
#26157
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Debashis Mukherjee is a theoretical chemist, well known for his research in the fields of molecular many body theory, theoretical spectroscopy, finite temperature non-perturbative many body theories. Mukherjee has been the first to develop and implement a class of many-body methods for electronic structure which are now standard works in the field. These methods, collectively called multireference coupled cluster formalisms, are versatile and powerful methods for predicting with quantitative accuracy the energetics and cross-sections of a vast range of molecular excitations and ionization. A l...
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Jens Blauert
#26158
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Jens Peter Blauert is a German scientist specializing in psychoacoustics and an emeritus professor at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum, where he founded the Institute of Communication Acoustics. His major scientific fields of interest are spatial hearing, binaural technology, aural architecture, perceptual quality, speech technology, virtual environments and tele-presence.
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Harold Furth
#26159
Overall Influence
1930 - 2002 (72 years)
Harold Paul Furth was an Austrian-American physicist who was a pioneer in leading the American efforts to harness thermonuclear fusion for the generation of electricity. He died of a heart ailment on 21 February 2002.
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Mumia Abu-Jamal
#26160
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Mumia Abu-Jamal is an American political activist and journalist who was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in 1982 for the 1981 murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. While on death row, he has written and commented on the criminal justice system in the United States. After numerous appeals, his death penalty sentence was overturned by a federal court. In 2011, the prosecution agreed to a sentence of life imprisonment without parole. He entered the general prison population early the following year.
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Kelvin Droegemeier
#26161
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Kelvin Kay Droegemeier is an American research meteorologist, most recently having served as Director of The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Droegemeier is known for his research in predicting the development of extreme weather events, and previously served as Oklahoma Secretary of Science and Technology and the Vice President for Research at the University of Oklahoma. He currently is serving as Regents Professor of Meteorology, Roger and Sherry Teigen Presidential Professor, and Weathernews Chair Emeritus at the University of Oklahoma.
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