Search People Result | Academic Influence

Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines

Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.

Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.

We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.

To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).

Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …

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List of the most influential people

#2701

Dariush Divsalar

#131500

Overall Influence

#2702

John H. Brodie

#131547

Overall Influence

1970 - 2006 (36 years)

John Hartley Brodie , was an American theoretical physicist specializing in string theory. Diagnosed with bipolar disorder after a psychotic episode in 2002, he left academia in 2004. Early life and education Brodie was born in Worcester, Massachusetts to the British born Quaker biochemists Angela Hartley Brodie and Harry Brodie. His grandfather Herbert Hartley had also been a biochemist. He was raised in Columbia, Maryland, where he graduated from Atholton High School. Brodie received bachelor's and master's degrees in physics from Cornell University in 1991 and 1992, respectively. He took o...

#2703

Chester Mathis

#131651

Overall Influence

Chester Mathis is an American chemist who is currently the Distinguished Professor of Radiology at University of Pittsburgh and holds the UPMC Endowed Chair of PET Research. He is known for is work with William E. Klunk on a PET radiotracer for imaging amyloid, a protein linked to neurodegenerative diseases including Alzheimer’s. His efforts led to the creation of a novel category of high-efficacy radiopharmaceutical agents, for example Pittsburgh Compound-B , which can be used to assess beta-amyloid in the living human brain using PET scanning, and which is a fluorescent analog of thioflavin T.

#2704

Franklin David Costantini

#131670

Overall Influence

#2705

Alison Winter

#131801

Overall Influence

1965 - 2016 (51 years)

Alison Winter was an American academic. Biography Born on 19 November 1965 in New Haven, Connecticut, Winter spent her early childhood in Bonn, Germany, and attended high school in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where her father taught mathematics at the University of Michigan. His influence led her to study the history of science at the University of Chicago beginning in 1983. Winter moved to the United Kingdom for graduate study, where she met Adrian Johns in 1987. The two married in 1992. Winter completed her M. Phil at the University of Cambridge in 1991, followed by a PhD in 1993. She began teachi...

#2706

Zhen Jane Wang

#131897

Overall Influence

Zhen Jane Wang is a Chinese-Canadian signal processing researcher whose research includes work on statistical signal processing, image fusion, digital video fingerprinting, biological network inference, and deep learning. She is a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of British Columbia, and the editor-in-chief of IEEE Signal Processing Letters.

#2707

Bradley Alpert

#131916

Overall Influence

Bradley K. Alpert is a computational scientist at NIST. He is probably best known for co-developing fast spherical filters. His fast spherical filters were critical in the construction of the most efficient three-dimensional fast multipole methods for solving the Helmholtz equation and Maxwell's equations. Other well-known work of his includes contributions to computational methods for time-domain wave propagation, quadratures for singular integrals, and multiwavelets.

#2708

Alice Cheung

#132016

Overall Influence

Alice Cheung is an American biochemist who is a professor of molecular biology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her research considers the molecular and cellular biology of polarization. She was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2020.

#2709

James J. Morgan

#132158

Overall Influence

#2710

William D. Jones

#132181

Overall Influence

#2711

Kornelius Nielsch

#132202

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (52 years)

#2712

Marco Pavone

#132332

Overall Influence

#2713

Lute Maleki

#132418

Overall Influence

#2714

Thomas Michael O'Neil

#132506

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (85 years)

Thomas Michael O'Neil is an American physicist who specializes in plasma physics. Early life and career O’Neil obtained his bachelor's degree at California State University, Long Beach in 1962, and then his master's degree and Ph.D. at the University of California, San Diego in 1964 and 1965 respectively. From 1965 to 1967, he was a scientist at General Atomics and from 1967 at UCSD as an assistant professor and later a professor. From 1980 to 1984, he was on the advisory board of the Institute of Fusion Studies at the University of Texas at Austin.

#2715

Jean‐paul Revel

#132544

Overall Influence

#2716

Shimshon Gottesfeld

#132638

Overall Influence

#2717

Naia Butler-Craig

#132773

Overall Influence

Naia Butler-Craig is a science communicator and an American aerospace engineer. Early life and education As of 2022, she is a NASA Space Technology Graduate Research fellow in the High-Power Electric Propulsion Lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She joined Georgia Tech to pursue her doctoral research on electric propulsion after graduating from Embry–Riddle Aeronautical University and working in the Space and Science Technology Systems Branch at NASA Glenn Research Center.

#2718

John Tarbell

#132895

Overall Influence

Not to be confused American military officer and Mississippi Supreme Court judge Jonathan Tarbell John M. Tarbell is an American engineer, currently a CUNY and Wallace Coulter Distinguished Professor at City College of New York.

#2719

Mitsuhiro Shibayama

#132897

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (25 years)

#2720

Louise Gray Young

#132911

Overall Influence

1935 - 2018 (83 years)

Louise Gray Young was an American astronomer and researcher who specialised in molecular spectroscopy. She is best known for her spectroscopic analysis of the planetary atmospheres of Earth, Venus and Mars.

#2721

Yuri Suzuki

#132916

Overall Influence

Yuri Suzuki is a Professor of Applied Physics at Stanford University. She studies novel ground states and magnetic phenomena. She is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and an American Competitiveness and Innovation Fellow of the National Science Foundation.

#2722

Michio Hirano

#132951

Overall Influence

#2723

Francis D. Pagani

#132973

Overall Influence

#2724

Wolfgang Bauer

#132992

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (66 years)

Wolfgang W. Bauer is a university distinguished professor in the department of physics and astronomy at Michigan State University. He is also an author, with co-author Gary Westfall, of the introductory calculus-based physics textbook "University Physics", published by McGraw-Hill in 2023 .

#2725

Bik Kwoon Tye

#133076

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (78 years)

Bik Kwoon Yeung Tye is a Chinese-American molecular geneticist and structural biologist. Tye's pioneering work on eukaryotic DNA replication led to the discovery of the minichromosome maintenance genes in 1984, which encode the catalytic core of the eukaryotic replisome. Tye also determined the first high-resolution structures of both the MCM complex and the Origin Recognition Complex in 2015 and 2018. Tye is currently a Professor Emeritus at Cornell University and a visiting professor at the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology. She is married to Henry Sze-Hoi Tye and is the mothe...

#2726

Randal D. Koster

#133190

Overall Influence

#2727

Ali Aliev

#133243

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (70 years)

Ali Enver Aliev is a Crimean Tatar American physicist, research professor at the NanoTech Institute, and adjunct professor at Physics Department, The School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, University of Texas at Dallas. In 2011 he was recognized an “Inventor of the year” by Time magazine His fields of current research interest are nanoscience and nanotechnologies, electrochromism and acoustics. He holds a number of invention patents from the United States Patent and Trademark Office .

#2728

Simon Hackett

#133353

Overall Influence

Simon Hackett is a British academic and former social worker, who specialises in child protection and child maltreatment. He had been Principal of St Mary's College, Durham between September 2011 and 2018. From 2008 to 2011, he was Head of the School of Applied Social Sciences at Durham University. Before returning to Durham as a professor, he was a Tutor at the University of Manchester, a lecturer at Durham University, and Professor of Child Welfare at the University of Bedfordshire. He had also worked as a Child Protection Officer and in youth justice.

#2729

John Nelson Chiasson

#133408

Overall Influence

John Nelson Chiasson from the Boise State University, Boise, ID was named Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2012 for contributions to control of electric machines and power converters.

#2730

Steven Ray Hall

#133418

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (66 years)

Steven Ray Hall is the Chair of the Faculty and Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His research interests are in aerospace controls systems, including flexible space structure control, control of noise and vibration, especially in helicopters, and the development of smart material actuators. He is the coauthor of seven patents, mostly in the area of smart material actuation. His teaching includes graduate and undergraduate subjects in signals and systems, control theory, guidance and navigation, and flight mecha...

#2731

Bruce L. Levine

#133424

Overall Influence

#2732

Abigail A. Salyers

#133506

Overall Influence

#2733

Timothy M. Uyeki

#133591

Overall Influence

#2734

Wolfram Ruf

#133682

Overall Influence

#2735

Junsuk Rho

#133686

Overall Influence

#2736

Geoffrey C. Bower

#133766

Overall Influence

#2737

David A. Lightner

#133784

Overall Influence

#2738

Thomas Anthony Tombrello

#133902

Overall Influence

#2739

Robert N. Compton

#133991

Overall Influence

#2740

T. Viswanathan

#134265

Overall Influence

1927 - 2002 (75 years)

Tanjore Viswanathan was a Carnatic musician specializing in the Carnatic flute and voice. Early life and background Viswa, as T. Viswanathan is often called, was born in Madras, India. He was the grandson of the legendary Veena Dhanammal, considered one of the greatest players of Veena, the South Indian lute. His mother Jayammal was a singer, and often provided vocal support at her daughter's dance performances. Viswa's elder sister was T. Balasaraswati, the greatest exponent of Bharatanatyam in the second half of the 20th century. His elder brother was the mridangam player T. Ranganathan...

#2741

Hosea Nelson

#134300

Overall Influence

Hosea Nelson is an American chemist who is a professor at California Institute of Technology. His research investigates the design and total synthesis of complex molecules. He was a finalist for the 2021 Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists.

#2742

Richard Fork

#134308

Overall Influence

1935 - 2018 (83 years)

Richard L. Fork was an American physicist. Dr. Fork received a bachelor's degree in mathematics and physics from Principia College in 1957, and earned his doctorate in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He began working for Bell Laboratories in 1962, and joined the faculty of Rensselaer Institute of Technology in 1990. Four years later, Dr. Fork left Rensselaer for the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Over the course of his career, Fork was granted fellowship of the American Physical Society and Optical Society of America. He retired in 2017 and died on May 16, 2018, of respiratory arrest in Huntsville.

#2743

H. Manning Pickett

#134339

Overall Influence

#2744

W. Mack Grady

#134402

Overall Influence

W. Mack Grady is an American engineer, currently the Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Baylor University, Josey Centennial Professor Emeritus in Energy Resources at Cockrell School of Engineering, University of Texas at Austin and also a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

#2745

Douglas C. Noll

#134419

Overall Influence

#2746

Piotr Zelenay

#134491

Overall Influence

#2747

Lawrence I. Grossman

#134580

Overall Influence

#2748

Shlomo Margel

#134613

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (80 years)

Shlomo Margel is a Professor of Chemistry at Bar Ilan University specializing in polymers, biopolymers, functional thin films, encapsulation, surface chemistry, nanotechnology, nanobiotechnology and agro-nanotechnology.

#2749

Michael Yarus

#134681

Overall Influence

Michael Yarus is an American biologist and an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

#2750

Arden Leroy Albee

#134705

Overall Influence

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