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

#28351

Patrick Baert

#28362

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Patrick Baert is a Belgian sociologist and social theorist, based in Britain. He is a professor of Social Theory at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Selwyn College, Cambridge. Baert studied at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and at Oxford University where he obtained his D.Phil. in 1990. In Oxford, he studied with Rom Harré and wrote his dissertation on George Herbert Mead's notion of time and its relevance for social theory, subsequently published as Time, Self and Social Being. He carried out postdoctoral work with Claude Javeau in Brussels and Anthony Giddens in Cambridge before taking up a teaching position at Cambridge.

#28352

Christoph Broelsch

#28363

Overall Influence

1944 - 2019 (75 years)

Christoph Broelsch was a German surgeon and former high school teacher. Broelsch pioneered the liver transplant surgery, when he performed the first successful liver transplant on a child in 1989. Life Broelsch grew up with his five siblings in Bremen. His father, Werner Broelsch was a state youth pastor. By the end of the 1950s, the family moved to Berlin. After graduating from high school in 1963, Broelsch went on to study medicine in Cologne, Erlangen, and Düsseldorf. Afterwards he started working under Prof. Dr. Rudolf Pichlmayr at the Hannover Medical School, where he worked for 10 years before moving to Chicago.

#28353

John McCarthy

#28364

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

John Michael McCarthy is a retired American mixed martial arts referee best known for officiating numerous bouts promoted by the Ultimate Fighting Championship , dating back to UFC 2. He is credited as being one of the greatest and most recognizable referees in combat sports history and an important figure in the mixed martial arts world, helping create the Unified Rules of MMA after initially creating the original rule book of the UFC. He is currently a commentator for Bellator MMA and co-hosts the combat sports-based podcast "Weighing In" with former fighter Josh Thomson.

#28354

Henning Rübsam

#28365

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Henning Rübsam is a choreographer and dancer based in New York City. He is the artistic director of SENSEDANCE, a faculty member of The Juilliard School and Fordham University, and a visiting guest professor at Texas Academy of Ballet . He is the dance curator for Arts at Work and a resident choreographer for Hartford City Ballet.

#28355

Harry Messel

#28366

Overall Influence

1922 - 2015 (93 years)

Harry Messel, , was a Canadian-born Australian physicist and educator. Life and work Messel was born in Canada to Ukrainian parents. He was born in Levine Siding in Manitoba, and brought up in Rivers, Manitoba. He was accepted into the Royal Military College of Canada. During the Second World War he served as a paratrooper with the Canadian Forces. He entered Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, in 1946, enrolling in both Honours Engineering Physics and an Honours Degree in Mathematics.

#28356

Pierre Wolper

#28367

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Pierre Wolper is a Belgian computer scientist at the University of Liège. His research interests include verification methods for reactive and concurrent programs, as well as temporal databases. He is the co-recipient of the 2000 Gödel Prize, along with Moshe Y. Vardi, for his work on temporal logic with finite automata. He also received the 2005 Paris Kanellakis Award for this work.

#28357

David Brody

#28368

Overall Influence

1930 - Present (96 years)

David Brody is an American historian, who is professor emeritus of history at the University of California-Davis. Life and education Brody was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey, his parents had immigrated to the United States. Working his way through Harvard University, he received his bachelor's degree in 1952, a master's degree in 1953 and Ph.D. in history in 1958. His dissertation director was Oscar Handlin.

#28358

Rocío Orsi

#28369

Overall Influence

1976 - 2014 (38 years)

Rocío Orsi Portalo was a Spanish philosopher, essayist, and translator, as well as a professor of philosophy at Charles III University of Madrid . She is considered to be one of the most important Spanish-language thinkers of her generation.

#28359

Winston Peters

#28370

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Winston Raymond Peters is a New Zealand politician who has been the leader of New Zealand First since its foundation in 1993. Peters currently serves as the 13th deputy prime minister of New Zealand and 25th minister of foreign affairs since November 2023. He was a member of Parliament from 1979 to 1981, 1984 to 2008 and 2011 to 2020; Peters was re-elected for a fifteenth time at the 2023 general election.

#28360

Tom Wessels

#28371

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Tom Wessels is an American terrestrial ecologist working as a professor at Antioch University New England in the Department of Environmental Studies, where he founded a master's program in conservation biology. He is the author of five books and is an active environmentalist.

#28361

Gustav Naan

#28372

Overall Influence

1919 - 1994 (75 years)

Gustav Naan was a Soviet and Estonian physicist and philosopher. According to the Estonian Encyclopedia's definition, he "wrote plenty of irritating publicist articles". Personal life Gustav Naan was born in Russian SFSR in a village near Vladivostok to a family of Estonian settlers. He graduated from the Leningrad State University in 1941. He took part in World War II and joined the CPSU in 1943. Having settled to Estonia after the USSR annexed Estonia, Gustav Naan, a loyal communist and graduate of the Higher Party School of the AUCP published a number of Stalinist-oriented polemic pieces .

#28362

Uwe Sunde

#28373

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Uwe Sunde is a German economist and currently Professor of Economics at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich as well as a Research Professor in the ifo Center for Labour and Demographic Economics. Sunde's research interests include long-term development and growth, political economy, labour economics, population economics, and behavioural economics. In 2015, his research on risk preferences and on the role of life expectancy and human capital for long-term economic development earned him the Gossen Prize.

#28363

Michael Stolleis

Michael Stolleis

#28374

Overall Influence

1941 - 2021 (80 years)

Michael Stolleis was a German jurist and historian. He was a law professor at Goethe University Frankfurt until 2006 and directed the Max Planck Institut für Europäische Rechtsgeschichte of the Max Planck Society from 1991 to 2009.

#28364

Michael McKinnell

#28375

Overall Influence

1935 - 2020 (85 years)

Noel Michael McKinnell was a British-born American architect and co-founder of the Kallmann McKinnell & Wood architectural design firm. In 1962, McKinnell, who was a Columbia University graduate student at the time, and Columbia professor Gerhard Kallmann submitted the winning design for Boston City Hall, which opened in 1968. McKinnell and Kallman moved to Boston shortly after winning the competition and founded their firm, now known as Kallmann McKinnell & Wood, in 1962.

#28365

Jean Reno

#28376

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Juan Moreno y Herrera-Jiménez , better known as Jean Reno , is a French actor. He has worked in American, French, English, Japanese, Spanish and Italian movie productions; Reno appeared in films such as Flushed Away , Crimson Rivers , Godzilla , The Da Vinci Code , Mission: Impossible , The Pink Panther , Ronin , Les Visiteurs , Wasabi , The Big Blue , Hector and the Search for Happiness , La Femme Nikita , and Léon: The Professional .

#28366

Robert DuPont

#28377

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (90 years)

Robert L. DuPont is an American psychiatrist, known for his advocacy in the field of substance abuse. He is president of the Institute for Behavior and Health, whose mission is "to reduce the use of illegal drugs". He has written books including Chemical Slavery: Understanding Addiction and Stopping the Drug Epidemic, The Selfish Brain: Learning from Addiction, as well as Drug Testing in Treatment Settings, Drug Testing in Schools, and Drug Testing in Correctional Settings, published by the Hazelden Foundation. DuPont is a fellow of the American Society of Addiction Medicine and a life fellow...

#28367

Maya Jasanoff

#28378

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Maya R. Jasanoff is an American academic who serves as Coolidge Professor of History at Harvard University, where she focuses on the history of Britain and the British Empire. Early life Jasanoff grew up in Ithaca, New York and comes from a family of academics. Her parents, Sheila and Jay Jasanoff, are both Harvard professors, and her brother Alan is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She was educated at Harvard College before studying for a master's degree at Cambridge, where she worked with Christopher Bayly. She earned her PhD at Yale with Linda Colley, completing the...

#28368

Darren Clarke

#28379

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Darren Christopher Clarke, is a professional golfer from Northern Ireland who currently plays on the PGA Tour Champions and has previously played on the European Tour and PGA Tour. He has won 21 tournaments worldwide on a number of golf's main tours including the PGA Tour, European Tour, Japan Golf Tour and Sunshine Tour. His biggest victory came when he won the 2011 Open Championship at Royal St George's in England, his first major win after more than 20 years and 54 attempts.

#28369

Greg Rusedski

#28380

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Gregory Rusedski is a British-Canadian former professional tennis player. He was the British No. 1 in 1997, 1999 and 2006, and reached the ATP ranking of world No. 4 for periods from 6 October 1997 to 12 October 1997 and from 25 May 1998 to 21 June 1998.

#28370

Hamilton Morris

#28381

Overall Influence

1987 - Present (39 years)

Hamilton Morris is an American journalist, documentarian, and scientific researcher. He is the creator and director of the television series Hamilton's Pharmacopeia, in which he investigates the chemistry, history, and cultural impact of various psychoactive drugs.

#28371

Emma Watson

#28382

Overall Influence

1990 - Present (36 years)

Emma Charlotte Duerre Watson is an English actress. Known for her roles in both blockbusters and independent films, she has received a selection of accolades, including a Young Artist Award and three MTV Movie Awards. Watson has been ranked among the world's highest-paid actresses by Forbes and Vanity Fair, and was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2015.

#28372

Georg Iggers

#28383

Overall Influence

1926 - 2017 (91 years)

Georg Gerson Iggers was an American historian of modern Europe, historiography, and European intellectual history. Iggers was born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1926. Being a German Jew he fled Germany with his family to the US in 1938, only few weeks before the Kristallnacht. Iggers belonged to the young émigrés from the Third Reich who later in life, as academic scholars in the United States, had a decisive impact on reviewing critically the history of Germany.

#28373

Greg Morrisett

#28384

Overall Influence

John Gregory Morrisett is the Jack and Rilla Neafsey Dean and Vice Provost of Cornell Tech. He previously was Dean of the Faculty of Computing and Information Science at Cornell University. Morrisett was the Allen B. Cutting Professor of Computer Science in the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences prior to his position at Cornell.

#28374

Orrin Devinsky

#28385

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Orrin Devinsky is an American neurologist who is the Director of the NYU Comprehensive Epilepsy Center and the Saint Barnabas Institute of Neurology and Neurosurgery . He is also a professor of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry at NYU Langone School of Medicine. Devinsky specializes in epilepsy and behavioral neurology.

#28375

Elizabeth Danto

#28386

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Elizabeth Ann Danto is professor emeritus of social welfare at Hunter College, City University of New York. She is the author of Freud's Free Clinics: Psychoanalysis & Social Justice, 1918-1938 which received both the Gradiva Award and the Goethe Prize, and Historical Research . Dr. Danto writes and lectures internationally on the history of psychoanalysis as a system of thought and a marker of urban culture.

#28376

Richard L. Stroup

#28387

Overall Influence

1943 - 2021 (78 years)

Richard Lyndell Stroup was a free-market environmentalist and emeritus professor of economics at both North Carolina State University and Montana State University. He was co-founder of the Property and Environment Research Center and a senior fellow. He was also a research fellow at the Independent Institute, adjunct scholar of the Cato Institute, and a member of the Mont Pèlerin Society. At Montana State University, he served as head of the Department of Agricultural Economics & Economics from 2003 to 2006. Stroup was director of the Office of Policy Analysis in the U.S. Department of the ...

#28377

Vladimir Paar

#28388

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Vladimir Paar is a Croatian physicist and university professor. Paar was born in Zagreb. He graduated from the Faculty of Science, University of Zagreb, where he is currently a professor emeritus. He is a full member of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts since 1992.

#28378

Jean Fagan Yellin

#28389

Overall Influence

Jean Fagan Yellin was an American historian specializing in women's history and African-American history, and Distinguished Professor Emerita of English at Pace University. She is best known for her scholarship on escaped slave, abolitionist, and author Harriet Jacobs.

#28379

Jane Greaves

#28390

Overall Influence

Jane Greaves is a Professor of Astronomy based at Cardiff University. While at the University of St Andrews she led the team which discovered a protoplanet within the protoplanetary disk around the young star HL Tauri.

#28380

Mary Bunting

#28391

Overall Influence

1910 - 1998 (88 years)

Mary Ingraham Bunting was a bacterial geneticist and an influential American college president; Time profiled her as the magazine's November 3, 1961, cover story. She became Radcliffe College's fifth president in 1960 and was responsible for fully integrating women into Harvard University.

#28381

Oluwatoyin Asojo

#28392

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Oluwatoyin Asojo is Associate Professor and chair of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Hampton University. She was formerly an Associate Professor of Pediatrics-Tropical medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine. She works at "the interface of math, chemistry, biology, computation." She is a crystallographer and interested in structural studies of proteins from neglected tropical disease pathogens.

#28382

Matthew Dowd

#28393

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Matthew John Dowd is an American political pundit and consultant. He was the chief strategist for the Bush–Cheney 2004 presidential campaign and was an ABC News political analyst. On September 29, 2021, he announced a run for lieutenant governor of Texas as a Democrat against the incumbent, Dan Patrick. On December 7, 2021, Dowd announced the end of his campaign.

#28383

Jacek Salij

#28394

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Jacek Salij OP is a Polish theologian and Thomist, philosopher, Roman Catholic priest, Dominican, translator, writer and publicist. Biography During the years 1960-1967 he studied theology at The Dominican Philosophical-Theological College in Cracow, followed by studies during the years 1968-1970 at The Academy of Catholic Theology in Warsaw. In 1971, he obtained the title Doctor of Law and obtained a post-doctorate diploma in 1979. In 1984, he worked at The Catholic University of Leuven . In 1990, he was appointed extraordinary professor of The Academy of Catholic Theology, Warsaw and in 19...

#28384

Kong Qingdong

#28395

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Kong Qingdong is a controversial Chinese academic, author, talk show host, and social commentator. Kong is a prominent Chinese media figure, known for his vulgar and often brusque critiques on political issues and various individuals and groups. Kong has often been portrayed in the media as a figure of the Chinese New Left, calling for a reversal of Chinese economic reforms and a return to Mao-style policies.

#28385

Kaia Kanepi

#28396

Overall Influence

1985 - Present (41 years)

Kaia Kanepi is an Estonian professional tennis player. She achieved her career-high ranking of world No. 15 on 20 August 2012 and has won four singles titles on the WTA Tour. Described as a 'resident Grand Slam upset specialist' by The Guardian - with 19 wins over seeded players in the first week of Grand Slams; only two active players have more. She has also reached seven Grand Slam quarterfinals in all four championships , becoming the first Estonian to achieve this and was the first Estonian to be ranked inside the world's top 15. Kanepi's numerous achievements have made her one of Estonia's most famous and successful professional tennis players in history.

#28386

James Blades

#28397

Overall Influence

1901 - 1999 (98 years)

James Blades OBE was an English percussionist. He was one of the most distinguished percussionists in Western music, with a long and varied career. His book Percussion Instruments and their History is a standard reference work on the subject.

#28387

Nina Byers

#28398

Overall Influence

1930 - 2014 (84 years)

Nina Byers was a theoretical physicist, research professor and professor of physics emeritus in the department of physics and astronomy, UCLA, and Fellow of Somerville College, Oxford. Contributions Byers received a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1950 and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1956.

#28388

Gretchen McCulloch

#28399

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Gretchen McCulloch is a Canadian linguist. On her blog, as well as her podcast Lingthusiasm she offers linguistic analysis of online communication such as internet memes, emoji and instant messaging. She writes regularly for Wired and previously did so for The Toast. In 2019, she published a book on internet linguistics, Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language.

#28389

George Gaskell

#28400

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

George Gaskell is a British Emeritus Professor of Social Psychology at the London School of Economics and Political Science . Formerly Director of the Methodology Institute, which he established with Colm O’Muircheartaigh, he was Pro-director for Planning and Resources and a member of the LSE Council and Court of Governors.

#28390

Jewel

#28401

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Jewel Kilcher , known professionally as Jewel, is an American singer-songwriter. She has received four Grammy Award nominations and, as of 2021, has sold over 30 million albums worldwide. Jewel was raised near Homer, Alaska, where she grew up singing and yodeling as a duo with her father, Atz Kilcher, a local musician. At age fifteen, she received a partial scholarship at the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan, where she studied operatic voice. After graduating, she began writing and performing at clubs and coffeehouses in San Diego, California. Based on local media attention, she was offere...

#28391

Alan Wilder

#28402

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Alan Charles Wilder is an English musician, composer, arranger, record producer and former member of the electronic band Depeche Mode from 1982 to 1995. Since his departure from the band, the musical project called Recoil became his primary musical enterprise, which initially started as a side project to Depeche Mode in 1986. Wilder has also provided production and remixing services to the bands Nitzer Ebb and Curve. Alan Wilder was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2020 as a member of Depeche Mode. He is a classically trained musician.

#28392

Karuppannan Jaishankar

Karuppannan Jaishankar

#28403

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

#28393

Bernard Lander

#28404

Overall Influence

1915 - 2010 (95 years)

Bernard Lander , founder and first president of Touro College, was a rabbi, social scientist and educator, a leader in the Jewish community and a pioneer in Jewish and general higher education. Biography Lander was one of three associate directors of the Mayor's Committee on Unity, established in 1944 by former New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, which became the city's first Commission on Human Rights. The commission prepared the first civil rights legislation for New York state. An ordained Orthodox rabbi, he held a doctorate in sociology from Columbia University.

#28394

Quill Kukla

#28405

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Quill Kukla is a Canadian and American philosopher. They are a Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University and the Senior Research Scholar at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics. They are also Humboldt Research Scholar at Leibniz University Hannover for 2020 and 2021. They are known for their work in bioethics, analytic epistemology, philosophy of language, and feminist philosophy.

#28395

Stjepan Mesić

#28406

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (92 years)

Stjepan "Stipe" Mesić is a Croatian lawyer and politician who served as President of Croatia from 2000 to 2010. Before serving two five-year terms as president, he was prime minister of SR Croatia after the first multi-party elections, the last president of the Presidency of Yugoslavia and consequently secretary general of the Non-Aligned Movement , as well as speaker of the Croatian Parliament , a judge in Našice, and mayor of his hometown of Orahovica.

#28396

Irma Adelman

#28407

Overall Influence

1930 - 2017 (87 years)

Irma Glicman Adelman was a Romanian-American economist. Early life and education Adelman was born in Chernivtsi, Romania in March 1930. In 1939, fleeing the Nazi regime, she moved with her family to Palestine where she continued her education through high school.

#28397

Mesut Yılmaz

#28408

Overall Influence

1947 - 2020 (73 years)

Ahmet Mesut Yılmaz was a Turkish politician. He was the leader of the Motherland Party from 1991 to 2002, and served three times as Prime Minister of Turkey. His first two prime-ministerial terms lasted just months , while the third ran from June 1997 to January 1999. The first was brought to an end by defeat in the 1991 elections, the latter two by the breakdown of Yılmaz' coalition governments.

#28398

Charles M. Payne

Charles M. Payne

#28409

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Charles M. Payne, Jr. is an American academic whose areas of study include civil rights activism, urban education reform, social inequality, and modern African-American history. He was the Chief Education Officer for Chicago Public Schools and used to be the Frank P. Hixon Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago's School of Social Service Administration.

#28399

Speros Vryonis

#28410

Overall Influence

1928 - 2019 (91 years)

Speros Vryonis Jr. was an American historian of Greek descent and a specialist in Byzantine, Balkan, and Greek history. He was the author of a number of works on Byzantine and Greek-Turkish relations, including his seminal The Decline of Medieval Hellenism in Asia Minor and The Mechanism of Catastrophe .

#28400

Kohei Saito

#28411

Overall Influence

1987 - Present (39 years)

is a Japanese philosopher. He is an associate professor at the University of Tokyo. Saito works on ecology and political economy from a Marxist perspective. His book, Capital in the Anthropocene, has been credited for inspiring a resurgence of interest in Marxist thought in Japan.

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