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

#27801

Rupert Everett

#27812

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Rupert James Hector Everett is an English actor. He first came to public attention in 1981 when he was cast in Julian Mitchell's play and subsequent film Another Country as a gay pupil at an English public school in the 1930s; the role earned him his first BAFTA Award nomination. He received a second BAFTA nomination and his first Golden Globe Award nomination for his role in My Best Friend's Wedding , followed by a second Golden Globe nomination for An Ideal Husband .

#27802

Oliver Taplin

#27813

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Oliver Taplin, FBA is a retired British academic and classicist. He was a fellow of Magdalen College and Professor of Classical Languages and Literature at the University of Oxford. He holds a DPhil from Oxford University.

#27803

Michael Chagares

#27814

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Michael Arthur Chagares is an American lawyer who has served as the chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit since 2020. He was appointed to the court by President George W. Bush in 2006.

#27804

Otto Pollak

#27815

Overall Influence

1908 - 1998 (90 years)

Otto Pollak was a writer and a professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. His most controversial and famous book was The Criminality of Women , in which he suggested that women commit just as much crime as men, but that their crime is more easily hidden. Pollak further argued that the criminal justice system was biased by preconceptions about women and did not convict or sentence women as harshly as men. His empirical work has provided a starting point for criminology on women. His work has also been used in political debates, as some antifeminist or masculist groups have appro...

#27805

Karl Spangenberg

#27816

Overall Influence

Karl Spangenberg was an American engineer, social scientist, academic, futurist, writer, and visionary. Affiliations Spangenberg was a member of the American Physical Society and became an IRE Associate in 1934, Senior Member in 1945, and Fellow in 1949.

#27806

Roland Bulirsch

Roland Bulirsch

#27817

Overall Influence

1932 - 2022 (90 years)

Roland Zdeněk Bulirsch was a German mathematician specialising in numerical analysis. He studied and taught at the Technical University of Munich, and taught internationally as visiting professor. He was co-author of the reference book Introduction to Numerical Analysis, and president of the edition of the works by Johannes Kepler. He received honorary doctorates from international universities, and several awards.

#27807

Ernesto Mayz Vallenilla

#27818

Overall Influence

1925 - 2015 (90 years)

Ernesto Mayz Vallenilla was a Venezuelan philosopher. Biography Vallenilla graduated from Liceo Andrés Bello High School in Caracas. He graduated with degrees in philosophy and literature from Universidad Central de Venezuela in 1950, where he also obtained his PhD in Philosophy. He also studied at universities in Göttingen, Freiburg, and Munich, Germany.

#27808

Herbert S. Gutowsky

#27819

Overall Influence

1919 - 2000 (81 years)

Herbert Sander Gutowsky was an American chemist who was a professor of chemistry at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Gutowsky was the first to apply nuclear magnetic resonance methods to the field of chemistry. He used nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy to determine the structure of molecules. His pioneering work developed experimental control of NMR as a scientific instrument, connected experimental observations with theoretical models, and made NMR one of the most effective analytical tools for analysis of molecular structure and dynamics in liquids, solids, and gases, us...

#27809

Joseph S. Murphy

#27820

Overall Influence

1933 - 1998 (65 years)

Joseph Samson Murphy was an American political scientist and university administrator, who was President of Queens College, President of Bennington College, and Chancellor of the City University of New York.

#27810

Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi

#27821

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi is a Yemeni politician and former field marshal of the Yemeni Armed Forces who served as the president of Yemen from 2012 until 2022, when he stepped down and transferred executive authority to the Presidential Leadership Council, with Rashad al-Alimi as its chairman. He was the vice president to Ali Abdullah Saleh from 1994 to 2012.

#27811

Morris Overstreet

#27822

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Morris L. Overstreet is a judge. He is the first African-American elected to a statewide office in the history of the State of Texas. He was twice elected to serve on the state's highest criminal appellate court, Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, from 1990 to 1998. As a member of the court, he authored over 500 opinions.

#27812

Jenny Harrison

#27823

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Jenny Harrison is a professor of mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley. Education and career Harrison grew up in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. On graduating from the University of Alabama, she won a Marshall Scholarship which she used to fund her graduate studies at the University of Warwick. She completed her doctorate there in 1975, supervised by Christopher Zeeman. Hassler Whitney was her postdoctoral adviser at the Institute for Advanced Study, and she was also one of the Miller Research Fellows at Berkeley. She was on the tenured faculty at the University of Oxford from 1978 to 1...

#27813

Peng Huanwu

#27824

Overall Influence

1915 - 2007 (92 years)

Peng Huanwu was a Chinese physicist. He was a member of Chinese Academy of Sciences , and a leader of Chinese nuclear weaponry projects. Life and career Peng was born in Changchun, Jilin Province; his father was from Macheng County, Hubei Province. After graduating from department of physics of Tsinghua University, Peng continued to pursue his postgraduate degree. After the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War in July 1937, he went to teach at Yunnan University. In 1938, Peng was enrolled in foreign study program and went to study at University of Edinburgh in Scotland, and worked with prominent physicist Max Born.

#27814

Peter Schneider

#27825

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Peter Schneider is an American film executive, film producer and theatrical producer. He is best known for being, from 1985 to 1999, the president of Disney's feature animation department, which became known as Walt Disney Feature Animation in 1986, and was responsible for helping to turn the feature animation department around and creating some of the most critically acclaimed and highest grossing animated features that Disney released in a period that became known as the "Disney Renaissance".

#27815

Velta Ruke-Dravina

#27826

Overall Influence

1917 - 2003 (86 years)

Velta Ruke-Dravina was a Latvian-born Swedish linguist and folklorist, as well as a professor in Baltic languages at Stockholm University. Ruke-Dravina's research interests included children's language, language contact, and dialectology. Her doctoral thesis was about diminutives in Latvian. She held the only professorship in Baltic languages outside the Baltics and had a leading role in developing the teaching program on the subject at Stockholm University. In 1980, she was elected as a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities.

#27816

Manfred Börner

#27827

Overall Influence

1929 - 1996 (67 years)

Manfred Börner was a German physicist he holds nearly 60 patents and is best known for his contributions to the development of fibre optic technology. He developed the first working optical fibre data transmission system in 1965.

#27817

Ronald Oaxaca

#27828

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Ronald L. Oaxaca is the McClelland Professor of Economics at the University of Arizona, Tucson. His areas of research include labor economics, applied econometrics and applied microeconomics. Oaxaca graduated from California State University, Fresno in 1965, and went on to earn a Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1971.

#27818

Marc Gasol

#27829

Overall Influence

1985 - Present (41 years)

Marc Gasol Sáez is a Spanish professional basketball player for Bàsquet Girona of the Liga ACB. The center is a two-time All-NBA Team member and a three-time NBA All-Star. He was named the NBA Defensive Player of the Year with the Memphis Grizzlies in 2013, and won an NBA championship with the Toronto Raptors in 2019.

#27819

Yutaka Takanashi

#27830

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (91 years)

Yutaka Takanashi is a Japanese photographer who has photographed fashion, urban design, and city life, and is best known for his depiction of Tokyo. Life and career Takanashi was born on 6 February 1935 in Shirogane-chō, Ushigome-ku , Tokyo. In 1943 he was evacuated to Saitama . In 1953 he graduated from Tokyo Metropolitan Aoyama High School and entered the photography department of Nihon University. His first camera was a Canon IVSb 35 mm rangefinder.

#27820

Darlene Clark Hine

#27831

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Darlene Clark Hine is an American author and professor in the field of African-American history. She is a recipient of the 2014 National Humanities Medal. Early life and education Darlene Clark was born in Morley, Missouri, the oldest of four children of Levester Clark, a truck driver, and Lottie Mae Clark. She married William C. Hine in 1970 and divorced in 1974. She married Johnny E. Brown in 1981 and divorced in 1986 and has one daughter, Robbie Davine.

#27821

Miroljub Jevtić

Miroljub Jevtić

#27832

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Miroljub Jevtić is Serbian Politologist of religion and professor at the Faculty of Political Science, University of Belgrade. Career Jevtić graduated from the Faculty of Political Science at the University of Belgrade, Serbia. He received a master's degree from the University of Belgrade's Law School; his thesis was entitled ”Islamic understanding of war and the role of the Islamic Conference in preserving the peace”. Jevtić studied for his doctorate at the Faculty of Political Science, University of Belgrade, Serbia. His thesis was titled ”Modern Jihad and war”. Jevtić began his academic ca...

#27822

Florence Welch

#27833

Overall Influence

1986 - Present (40 years)

Florence Leontine Mary Welch is an English–American singer and songwriter. She is best known as the lead vocalist and primary songwriter of the indie rock band Florence and the Machine. The band's debut studio album, Lungs , topped the UK Albums Chart and won the Brit Award for Best British Album. Their next four albums also achieved chart success. In 2018, Welch released a book titled Useless Magic, a collection of lyrics and poems written by her, along with illustrations.

#27823

Jani Radebaugh

#27834

Overall Influence

Jani Radebaugh is an American planetary scientist and professor of geology at Brigham Young University who specializes in field studies of planets. Radebaugh's research focuses on Saturn's moon Titan, Jupiter's moon Io, the Earth's Moon, Mars and Pluto. Radebaugh is a Science Team member of the Dragonfly mission to Titan, the IVO Io mission proposal, and the Mars Median project. She was an Associate Team Member of the Cassini-Huygens RADAR instrument from 2008 to 2017, and was a graduate student scientist for Io for the Galileo mission. She does science outreach through her work as an expert ...

#27824

Emma Walton Hamilton

#27835

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Emma Katherine Walton Hamilton is a British-American children's book author, theatrical director, and actress. She is an instructor in the MFA program at Stony Brook Southampton, where she serves as Director of the Southampton Children's Literature Fellows program and the Young Artists and Writers Project . She is the daughter of singer and actress Dame Julie Andrews and set/costume designer Tony Walton.

#27825

Diego Golombek

#27836

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Diego Golombek is an Argentine biologist, communicator and popularizer of science. He is currently professor at National University of Quilmes and researcher at CONICET. He is author of several books about biology and related topics, although he is mainly known due to his appearances on radio and television.

#27826

Chidi Odinkalu

#27837

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Chidi Anselm Odinkalu was born on June 12, 1968. He is a Nigerian human rights activist, lawyer, professor and writer. He was the former Chairman of Nigeria's National Human Rights Commission and was recently the senior team manager for the Africa Program of Open Society Justice Initiative.

#27827

Raissa Berg

#27838

Overall Influence

1913 - 2006 (93 years)

Raissa L'vovna Berg was a Russian geneticist and evolutionary biologist. Early life Raissa Berg was born in St. Petersburg, the second child of Lev Semyonovitch Berg and Polina Abramovna Kotlovker, both natives of Bendery, within the Jewish Pale. In order to study at Moscow University, Lev Berg chose to convert to Lutheranism and became a noted geographer and ichthyologist.

#27828

Harold Brodkey

#27839

Overall Influence

1930 - 1996 (66 years)

Harold Brodkey , born Aaron Roy Weintraub, was an American short-story writer and novelist. Life Brodkey was the second child born in Staunton, Illinois, to Max Weintraub and Celia Glazer Weintraub ; Samuel Weintraub was their oldest child. He was Jewish. When their birth mother Celia died, Samuel Weintraub was four and old enough to remain with his father but Aaron Weintraub, only two years old, was adopted by his father's cousin, Doris Rubenstein Brodkey and her husband, Joseph Brodkey and renamed Harold Roy Brodkey. Doris and Joseph lived in University City, Missouri, with their daughter, Marilyn Ruth Brodkey .

#27829

Corneliu Baba

#27840

Overall Influence

1906 - 1997 (91 years)

Corneliu Baba was a Romanian painter, primarily a portraitist, but also known as a genre painter and an illustrator of books. Early life Having first studied under his father, the academic painter Gheorghe Baba, Baba studied briefly at the National School of Fine Arts in Bucharest, but did not receive a degree. His first public exhibition was in 1934 in the spa town of Băile Herculane; this led to his studying later that year under Nicolae Tonitza in Iași, finally receiving a diploma in Fine Arts from the Iași Academy of Fine Arts in 1938, where he was named assistant to the Chair of Painting...

#27830

Fritz W. Scharpf

#27841

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (91 years)

Fritz W. Scharpf is a German professor and Emeritus Director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies. His areas of interest include; the organisational problems and decision processes in governments at all levels; the political economy of inflation and unemployment; comparative political economy of the welfare state.

#27831

Charles Muscatine

#27842

Overall Influence

1920 - 2010 (90 years)

Charles Muscatine was an American academic specializing in medieval literature, particularly Chaucer. Following service in the U.S. Navy during World War II, he returned home to complete his studies and went on to become a tutor at UC Berkeley. He was fired from his position there for refusing to sign a McCarthyite oath. He challenged the termination in court and won reinstatement to his post at Berkeley in a landmark 1951 court decision.

#27832

James D. Kirylo

James D. Kirylo

#27843

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

James David Kirylo is professor of education at the University of South Carolina who teaches courses that examine concepts associated with critical pedagogy, curriculum theorizing, teacher leadership, diversity and literacy. Among other books, he is author of Teaching with Purpose: An Inquiry into the Who, Why, and How We Teach, A Turning Point in Teacher Education: A Time for Resistance, Reflection and Change , and Paulo Freire: The Man from Recife, which is one of the most comprehensive texts in English on the life and thought of Paulo Freire, significantly contributing to Freirean scholars...

#27833

Klaus Wagner

#27844

Overall Influence

1910 - 2000 (90 years)

Klaus Wagner was a German mathematician known for his contributions to graph theory. Education and career Wagner studied topology at the University of Cologne under the supervision of who had been a student of Issai Schur. Wagner received his Ph.D. in 1937, with a dissertation concerning the Jordan curve theorem and four color theorem, and taught at Cologne for many years himself. In 1970, he moved to the University of Duisburg, where he remained until his retirement in 1978.

#27834

Antony Anghie

#27845

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Antony T. Anghie is a law professor at the National University of Singapore Faculty of Law and Secretary-General of the Asian Society of International Law. He was previously the Samuel D. Thurman Professor at S. J. Quinney College of Law, University of Utah and continues to serve as Professor at the College of Law. He has been visiting professor at numerous schools including the American University Cairo, Cornell Law School, the London School of Economics, Harvard Law School and the University of Brasilia.

#27835

Sacvan Bercovitch

#27846

Overall Influence

1933 - 2014 (81 years)

Sacvan Bercovitch was a Canadian literary and cultural critic who spent most of his life teaching and writing in the United States. During an academic career spanning five decades, he was considered to be one of the most influential and controversial figures of his generation in the emerging field of American studies.

#27836

Howard Eves

#27847

Overall Influence

1911 - 2004 (93 years)

Howard Whitley Eves was an American mathematician, known for his work in geometry and the history of mathematics. Eves received his B.S. from the University of Virginia, an M.A. from Harvard University, and a Ph.D. in mathematics from Oregon State University in 1948, the last with a dissertation titled A Class of Projective Space Curves written under Ingomar Hostetter. He then spent most of his career at the University of Maine, 1954–1976. In later life, he occasionally taught at University of Central Florida.

#27837

Ramajogayya Sastry

Ramajogayya Sastry

#27848

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Ramajogayya Sastry is an Indian film lyricist, known for his works in Telugu cinema and music. Early life Ramajogayya Sastry was born in Arepalli Muppalla, Ipuru Mandal near Narasaraopet of Guntur district. His father, Suryaprakasa Rao, was a priest and agriculturist and his mother Saraswatamma is a housewife. He did his B.Tech. from REC Warangal and M.Tech. from IIT Kharagpur.

#27838

Charlie Daniels

#27849

Overall Influence

1936 - 2020 (84 years)

Charles Edward Daniels was an American singer, musician, and songwriter. His music fused rock, country, blues and jazz, pioneering Southern rock. He was best known for his number-one country hit "The Devil Went Down to Georgia". Much of his output, including all but one of his eight Billboard Hot 100 charting singles, was credited to the Charlie Daniels Band.

#27839

Carolyn Collette

#27850

Overall Influence

Carolyn P. Collette is an American literary critic and a specialist in medieval literature, particularly Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales. She is Professor Emerita of English Language and Literature at Mount Holyoke College, and a research associate at the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of York, in England.

#27840

Uche Okeke

#27851

Overall Influence

1933 - 2016 (83 years)

Christopher Uchefuna Okeke , also known as Uche Okeke , was an illustrator, painter, sculptor, and teacher. He was an art and aesthetic theorist, seminal to Nigerian modernism. Background Christopher Uchefuna Okeke was born on 30 April 1933 in Nimo, Njikoka Local Government Area of Anambra State, Nigeria, to Isaac Okonkwo Okeke and Monica Mgboye Okeke . Between 1940 and 1953, he attended St. Peter Claver's School, Kafanchan, Metropolitan College, Onitsha, and Bishop Shanahan College, Orlu, Nigeria, during which time he had already begun to demonstrate an avid interest in drawing and painting....

#27841

David M. Kennedy

#27852

Overall Influence

1905 - 1996 (91 years)

David Matthew Kennedy was an American politician and businessman. He served as the 60th U.S. Secretary of the Treasury and later as the 8th U.S. Ambassador to NATO, both under U.S. President Richard Nixon. He was Chief Executive and Chairman of the Board of Continental Illinois during the 1950s and 1960s.

#27842

Haun Saussy

#27853

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Caleb Powell Haun Saussy is University Professor at the University of Chicago. His primary teaching and research interests include classical Chinese poetry and commentary, literary theory, comparative study of oral traditions, problems of translation, pre-twentieth-century media history, and ethnography and ethics of medical care.

#27843

Mary Lou Clements-Mann

Mary Lou Clements-Mann

#27854

Overall Influence

1946 - 1998 (52 years)

Mary Lou Clements-Mann was the founder and first Director of the Center for Immunization Research at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and is well known for her work in the areas of HIV and influenza vaccine research.

#27844

David Antin

#27855

Overall Influence

1932 - 2016 (84 years)

David Abram Antin was an American poet, art critic, performance artist, and university professor. Education and early career Antin was born in New York City in 1932. After graduating from Brooklyn Technical High School, he earned his B.A. from City College of New York in 1955 and his M.A. from New York University in 1966. He spent the first ten years of his career as a translator of both scientific texts and fiction, including multiple scientific text translations for Pergamon Press where he interacted frequently with the company's flamboyant founder, British publishing tycoon Robert Maxwell.

#27845

Ellen Ketterson

#27856

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Ellen D. Ketterson is an American evolutionary biologist, behavioral ecologist, neuroendocrinologist and ornithologist best known for her experimental approach to the study of life-history trade-offs in a songbird, the Dark-eyed Junco. She is currently a Distinguished Professor of Biology, Director of the Environmental Resilience Institute, and affiliate professor in Cognitive Science, Gender Studies, Integrative Study of Animal Behavior, and Neuroscience at Indiana University.

#27846

Chile Eboe-Osuji

#27857

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Chile Eboe-Osuji is an International Jurist at the Lincoln Alexander School of Law and a Special Advisor to the President's Office at Toronto Metropolitan University. In his role at the Lincoln Alexander School of Law, Eboe-Osuji is leading discussions on the international human rights regime, the international humanitarian law regime, the role of international courts/tribunals, and the rule of law. He will also play a key role in advancing Lincoln Alexander Law's international profile through teaching initiatives, programmatic collaborations, and public discourse. Prior to joining the law s...

#27847

Robert G. Picard

Robert G. Picard

#27858

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Robert Georges Picard is an American writer and scholar in the field of media businesses and media policy economics. He heavily influenced media economics studies. Picard taught at Harvard University and University of Oxford. He is the author and editor of more than 32 books including Media and Communications Policy Making: Processes, Dynamics and International Variations, Handbook of the Economics of the Media, The Economics and Financing of Media Companies, Media Product Portfolios, Media Economics: Concepts and Issues, and Joint Operating Agreements: The Newspaper Preservation Act and Its ...

#27848

José Mujica

#27859

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (91 years)

José Alberto "Pepe" Mujica Cordano is a Uruguayan politician, former revolutionary and farmer who served as the 40th president of Uruguay from 2010 to 2015. A former guerrilla with the Tupamaros, he was tortured and imprisoned for 14 years during the military dictatorship in the 1970s and 1980s. A member of the Broad Front coalition of left-wing parties, Mujica was Minister of Livestock, Agriculture, and Fisheries from 2005 to 2008 and a Senator afterwards. As the candidate of the Broad Front, he won the 2009 presidential election and took office as president on 1 March 2010. He was the Secon...

#27849

Xu Wenli

#27860

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Xu Wenli , is a Chinese political activist and one of the leaders of the China Democracy Party. Xu organized and participated in the Democracy Wall movement and acted as the chief editor for the journal April Fifth Forum. Xu was twice arrested by the Chinese government and sentenced to a total of 28 years in jail, of which he served 16. After his exile to the United States on 24 December 2002, Xu received an honorary doctorate degree from Brown University, and has since worked at the university's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs as a senior research fellow.

#27850

Devaki Jain

#27861

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (93 years)

Devaki Jain is an Indian economist and writer, who has worked mainly in the field of feminist economics. In 2006 she was awarded the Padma Bhushan, the third-highest civilian award from Government of India, for her contribution to social justice and the empowerment of women.

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