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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School

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Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people

#29001

Stanley Clarke

#29012

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Stanley Clarke is an American bassist, composer and founding member of Return to Forever, one of the first jazz fusion bands. Clarke gave the bass guitar a prominence it lacked in jazz-related music. He is the first jazz-fusion bassist to headline tours, sell out shows worldwide and have recordings reach gold status.

#29002

Emerich Coreth

#29013

Overall Influence

1919 - 2006 (87 years)

Emerich Coreth was an Austrian Philosopher, Jesuit and Catholic Priest. He is well known for his works on metaphysics and philosophical anthropology. A close associate of Karl Rahner, Coreth is a renowned neo-Thomist of 20th century. He was the Rector of the University of Innsbruck and the Provincial of the Austrian Province of the Society of Jesus.

#29003

Robert Watson

#29014

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (49 years)

Robert Nicholas Maxwell Watson is a FreeBSD developer, and founder of the TrustedBSD Project. He is currently employed as a Professor of Systems, Security, and Architecture in the Security Research Group at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory.

#29004

Becky Burleigh

#29015

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Rebecca Lund Burleigh is an American soccer coach. Formerly also a college soccer player, she is best known for her 26-year tenure as the first head coach of the Florida Gators women's soccer team at the University of Florida, where she led the Gators soccer team to a National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I national championship in 1998. In 2021, Burleigh had a three-month spell as interim head coach of professional National Women's Soccer League team Orlando Pride.

#29005

Harry McGurk

#29016

Overall Influence

1936 - 1998 (62 years)

Harry McGurk was a British cognitive psychologist. He is known for his discovery of the McGurk effect, described in a 1976 paper with his research assistant John MacDonald, while he was a senior developmental psychologist at the University of Surrey.

#29006

John Alderson

#29017

Overall Influence

1922 - 2011 (89 years)

John Cottingham Alderson was a senior British police officer and expert on police and penal affairs. Alderson was born in Barnsley, West Riding of Yorkshire, and educated at Barnsley Technical College. In 1938 he enlisted in the Highland Light Infantry as a boy soldier and reached the rank of Corporal before transferring to the Army Physical Training Corps in 1941. He served with the APTC in North Africa and Italy and left the Army in 1946 with the rank of Warrant Officer Class II.

#29007

Richard Cockett

#29018

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Richard Cockett is a British historian, journalist and author. He is a regional editor of The Economist, with experience in Mexico, Central America, Africa and Singapore. He was previously a senior lecturer in politics and history at Royal Holloway, University of London.

#29008

Doron Aurbach

#29019

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Doron Aurbach is an Israeli electrochemist, materials and surface scientist. Biography Doron Aurbach was born in 1952 in Israel to parents who survived the Holocaust and fought the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, grew up in Ramat Gan and studied in Blich High School. He served in Sayeret Golani reconnaissance unit, a.k.a. 631st Reconnaissance Battalion, and fought west to the Suez Canal during the Yom Kippur War . Later he returned to Golani Brigade as a deputy commander of a combat support company, and was discharged from reserve duty with a rank of a Major , at the age of 46, as a patrol officer in...

#29009

Tetsuo Asano

#29020

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Tetsuo Asano is a Japanese computer scientist, the president of the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. His main research interest is in computational geometry. Education and career Asano was a student at Osaka University, earning bachelor's, masters, and doctoral degrees there in 1972, 1974, and 1977. He was on the faculty of Osaka Electro-Communication University from 1977 until 1998, when he joined JAIST. From 2012 to 2014 he was dean of the School of Information Science at JAIST. He became president of JAIST in April 2014

#29010

Stephen Palumbi

#29021

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Stephen R. Palumbi is the Jane and Marshall Steel Jr. Professor in Marine Sciences at Stanford University at Hopkins Marine Station. He also holds a Senior Fellowship at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.

#29011

Goh Keng Swee

#29022

Overall Influence

1918 - 2010 (92 years)

Goh Keng Swee , born Robert Goh Keng Swee, was a Singaporean statesman and economist who served as Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore between 1973 and 1985. Goh is widely recognised as one of the founding fathers of Singapore. He was also one of the founders of the People's Action Party , which has governed the country continuously since independence.

#29012

Daria Khaltourina

Daria Khaltourina

#29023

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (47 years)

Daria Andreyevna Khaltourina is a Russian sociologist, anthropologist, demographer, and a public figure. She is the head of the Group of the Monitoring of Global and Regional Risks of the Russian Academy of Sciences, co-chairperson of the Russian Coalition for Alcohol Control, as well as the Russian Coalition for Tobacco Control. She is a laureate of the Russian Science Support Foundation Award in "The Best Economists of the Russian Academy of Sciences" nomination .

#29013

Wolfgang Wagner

Wolfgang Wagner

#29024

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Wolfgang Wagner is an Austrian social psychologist, currently professor at the Department of Psychology at the University of Tartu, Estonia. Formerly he was at the Johannes Kepler University in Linz, Austria, and affiliated with the Department of Social Psychology and Methodology at the University of San Sebastián, Spain. He is renowned for his contributions to the Theory of Social Representations.

#29014

Gary B. Nash

#29025

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (93 years)

Gary Baring Nash was an American historian. He concentrated on the Revolutionary period, slavery and race, as well as the formation of political communities in Philadelphia and other cities. Life and education Nash was born in Merion, Pennsylvania, a Philadelphia, suburb. After graduating from Lower Merion High School, he attended Princeton University, where he earned his undergraduate and doctoral degrees . From 1955-58, he served in the U.S. Navy on the John W. Weeks , where he was antisubmarine officer and then gunnery officer.

#29015

Marisol Prado

#29026

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Rossana Marisol Prado Villegas , is a Chilean physician, psychiatrist and academic who became the first woman to hold the post of president of the University of Chile Student Federation which was founded in 1906; she was the first and only woman until Camila Vallejo assumed the post in August 2010, followed by Scarlett Mac-Ginty in November 2011.

#29016

Peter Baker

#29027

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Peter Eleftherios Baker is an American journalist and author. He is the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times and a political analyst for MSNBC, and was previously a reporter for The Washington Post for 20 years. Baker has covered five presidencies, from Bill Clinton through Joe Biden.

#29017

Vernon Cheadle

#29028

Overall Influence

1910 - 1995 (85 years)

Vernon Irvin Cheadle was an American botanist, educator and university administrator. He served as the second chancellor of the University of California, Santa Barbara from 1962 until 1977. He was born in Salem, South Dakota, and received his undergraduate degree from Miami University in Ohio in 1932, and a master's degree and Ph.D. in botany from Harvard University.

#29018

KC Johnson

#29029

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Robert David Johnson , also known as KC Johnson, is an American history professor at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He played a major role in reporting on the Duke University lacrosse rape case in 2006–2007. In 2007 he co-authored a book, Until Proven Innocent: Political Correctness and the Shameful Injustice of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case.

#29019

William Pearson

#29030

Overall Influence

William Raymond Pearson is professor of biochemistry and molecular Genetics in the School of Medicine at the University of Virginia. Pearson is best known for the development of the FASTA format. Education Pearson graduated with a BS in chemistry from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He received his PhD in 1977 from Caltech. As a graduate student, he published several papers describing computer programs for analyzing biological data.

#29020

Melissa Leach

#29031

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Melissa Leach, is a British geographer and social anthropologist. She studies sustainability and development concerns in policy-making and has a focus on the politics of science and technology of Africa. As of 2017 she was the Director of the Institute of Development Studies located on the University of Sussex campus.

#29021

Salima Ikram

#29032

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Salima Ikram is a Pakistani professor of Egyptology at the American University in Cairo, a participant in many Egyptian archaeological projects, the author of several books on Egyptian archaeology, a contributor to various magazines and a guest on pertinent television programs.

#29022

Basil Moore

#29033

Overall Influence

1933 - 2018 (85 years)

Basil John Moore was a Canadian post-Keynesian economist, best known for developing and promoting endogenous money theory, particularly the proposition that the money supply curve is horizontal, rather than upward sloping, a proposition known as horizontalism. He was the most vocal proponent of this theory, and is considered a central figure in post Keynesian economics

#29023

Fritz Eisel

#29034

Overall Influence

1929 - 2010 (81 years)

Fritz Eisel was a German painter and graphic artist. Life Eisel was born into a Communist working-class family in Lauterbach, a small town roughly 100 km north-east of Frankfurt am Main. He was the eldest of his parents' five children. At the start of 1945 he was ordered to go to nearby Battenberg to join one of the flak units set up to try to reduce the impact of enemy bombing raids on the important railway line there. He did not obey the order, and very shortly afterwards the US army occupied Lauterbach. In May 1945 the end of the war marked a return to multi-party government and Eisel, by then 16 years old, immediately took the opportunity to join the local Communist Party.

#29024

Jerzy Toeplitz

#29035

Overall Influence

1909 - 1995 (86 years)

Jerzy Toeplitz AO was a Polish film educator and theorist. He was the co-founder of the Polish Film School, and later took up an appointment in Australia for the Australian Film, Television and Radio School.

#29025

Hatoon al-Fassi

#29036

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Hatoon Ajwad al-Fassi is a Saudi Arabian historian, author and women's rights activist. She is an associate professor of women's history at King Saud University in Saudi Arabia, where she has been employed since 1989 and at the International Affairs Department at Qatar University. At the university, al-Fassi carries out historical research. Al-Fassi claims from her research into the pre-Islamic Arabian kingdom of Nabataea that women in the kingdom had more independence than women in modern Saudi Arabia. Al-Fassi was active in women's right to vote campaigns for the 2005 and 2011 municipal elections and was active in a similar campaign for the 2015 municipal elections.

#29026

Keith Martin Ball

Keith Martin Ball

#29037

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Keith Martin Ball FRS FRSE is a mathematician and professor at the University of Warwick. He was scientific director of the International Centre for Mathematical Sciences from 2010 to 2014. Education Ball was educated at Berkhamsted School and Trinity College, Cambridge where he studied the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos and was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics in 1982 and a PhD in 1987 for research supervised by Béla Bollobás.

#29027

Yasuharu Suematsu

Yasuharu Suematsu

#29038

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Yasuharu Suematsu is a researcher and educator in optical communication technology. His research has included the development of Dynamic Single Mode Semiconductor Lasers for actuation and the development of high-capacity, long-distance optical fiber communications technology.

#29028

Jay Inslee

#29039

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Jay Robert Inslee is an American politician, lawyer, and economist who has served as the 23rd governor of Washington since 2013. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1993 to 1995 and again from 1999 to 2012, and was a candidate for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. He is the longest-serving current governor in the United States.

#29029

Charles F. Abernathy

#29040

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Charles F. Abernathy is an American legal scholar who works as a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center. He is a graduate of Harvard University and of Harvard Law School. Books Abernathy, Charles F. Civil Rights: Cases and Materials. St. Paul, Minn. : West Pub. Co., 2012 Shulman, Stephen N., and Charles F. Abernathy. The law of equal employment opportunity. Boston: Warren, Gorham & Lamont. 1990 Abernathy, Charles F. Law in the United States: Cases and Materials. Washington, D.C: International Law Institute, 1995.

#29030

Franz Heukamp

#29041

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Franz Heukamp is the dean of IESE Business School and has held this post since 2016. He is also business management scholar and Professor of Managerial Decision Sciences at IESE Business School, University of Navarra.

#29031

Li Bulou

#29042

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Li Bulou is a Chinese translator and philosopher with a specialization in western philosophy and Marxism. He is also a member of the Academy of Social Sciences of Hubei, China. Li was previously a provincial official of the Publicity Department of the Chinese Communist Party.

#29032

Javier Pradera

#29043

Overall Influence

1934 - 2011 (77 years)

Francisco Javier Pradera Gortázar was a Spanish anti-Franco activist, journalist, political analyst and publisher. Pradera was a journalist and columnist for El País, based in Madrid. Pradera worked as an editorial writer at El País from 1976 to 1986. His first piece for El País was published on 16 May 1976. He remained an El País columnist and editorial board member from 1986 until his death in 2011. Outside of El País, Pradera worked as the director of the publishing firm, Alianza Editorial, and founded the publishing house, Siglo XXI.

#29033

Pravin Varaiya

#29044

Overall Influence

1940 - 2022 (82 years)

Pravin Pratap Varaiya was Nortel Networks Distinguished Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. Varaiya received his B.Sc. from University of Bombay and his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering in 1963 from University of California, Berkeley.

#29034

Pamela Abbott

#29045

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Pamela Abbott, FAcSS is an English academic in sociology, gender and development studies. She is Director of the Centre for Global Development and Professor in the School of Education at the University of Aberdeen, and Director of the Centre for Global Development.

#29035

Amy Klobuchar

#29046

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Amy Jean Klobuchar is an American politician and lawyer serving as the senior United States senator from Minnesota, a seat she has held since 2007. A member of the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party , Minnesota's affiliate of the Democratic Party, she previously served as the county attorney of Hennepin County, Minnesota.

#29036

Mikhail Iampolski

#29047

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Mikhail Beneaminovich Iampolski is a full professor of comparative literature and Russian and Slavic studies at New York University. He is the author of The Memory of Tiresias. Life and work Iampolski gained a BA in 1971 at the Moscow Pedagogical Institute and a PhD in French Philosophy in 1977 at the Russian Academy of Pedagogical Sciences.

#29037

Alessandro Nannini

#29048

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Alessandro "Sandro" Nannini is a former racing driver from Italy. He is the younger brother of singer Gianna Nannini. His five-year F1 career resulted in his one and only win at the 1989 Japanese Grand Prix but ended less than a year later after a helicopter crash severed his right forearm.

#29038

Choe Yun

#29049

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Choe Hyeon-mu , better known by her pen name Choe Yun , is a South Korean writer, translator, and professor of French literature. Life Choe was born in Seoul in 1953. She received her Ph.D. from Sogang University, graduating in 1978 and travelling to France, where she received the doctorate de 3ème Cycle de l'Université de Provence D.E.A. in Aix-en-Provence and Marseilles. She made her literary debut at the relatively late age of 40, with the publication of the short story collection There a Petal Silently Falls. After her debut, however, Choe was quickly recognized as one of the most importan...

#29039

Riordan Roett

#29050

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Riordan Roett is an American political scientist specializing in Latin America. He received his B.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University in political science and was a post-doctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was assistant professor and acting director of the Center for Latin American Studies at Vanderbilt University and was the Sarita and Don Johnston Professor of Political Science and Director of the Western Hemisphere Program at the Johns Hopkins University's Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C. until 2018. He is now Profe...

#29040

Josef Dvorak

#29051

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (92 years)

Josef Dvorak is an Austrian therapist, Catholic theologian , author, and co-founder of the Viennese Actionism. Work For several years, Dvorak worked as a journalist for the Viennese newspapers Kurier and Arbeiter-Zeitung. At least from the beginning of the 1960s, Dvorak worked in Vienna as a therapist. In this time he also got to know Otto Muehl, who conducted a conversation analysis on Dvorak. At the end of the 1960s, Dvorak was an important intellectual source of inspiration for the left-winged Viennese student scene.

#29041

Shantha Sinha

#29052

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Shantha Sinha is an Indian anti-child labour activist. She is the founder of Mamidipudi Venkatarangaiya Foundation, popularly known as MV Foundation , and is a professor in the Department of Political science in Hyderabad Central University. She headed the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights for two consecutive terms ; The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights was set up in March 2007 under the Commission for Protection of Child Rights Act, 2005, an Act of Parliament . Sinha was its first chairperson. She was awarded the civilian honour of Padma Shri by the Govern...

#29042

Dave DeBusschere

#29053

Overall Influence

1940 - 2003 (63 years)

David Albert DeBusschere was an American professional National Basketball Association player and coach and Major League Baseball player. He played for the Chicago White Sox of MLB in 1962 and 1963 and in the NBA for the Detroit Pistons from 1962 through 1968 and for the New York Knicks from 1968 to 1974. He was also the head coach for the Pistons from 1964 through 1967.

#29043

Jérôme Lulling

#29054

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Jérôme Lulling is a linguist from Luxembourg who has been a leading figure in preservation and educational efforts relating to the Luxembourgish language, a Germanic language that became one of Luxembourg’s three official languages in 1984 and is spoken by approximately 600,000 people worldwide.

#29044

Anthony Bottoms

#29055

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Sir Anthony Edward Bottoms FBA is a British criminologist. He is life fellow at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, having previously been a Wolfson Professor of Criminology at the Institute of Criminology in the Faculty of Law at the University of Cambridge from 1984 to 2006 and until December 2007 a professor of criminology jointly at the universities of Cambridge and Sheffield.

#29045

Anders Tegnell

#29056

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Nils Anders Tegnell is a Swedish civil servant and physician specialising in infectious disease. From 2013 until his resignation in March 2022 he was Sweden's state epidemiologist. Tegnell had key roles in the Swedish response to the 2009 swine flu pandemic and COVID-19 pandemic. During the Covid pandemic in 2020, he became a divisive figure in Sweden and internationally due to his and the Public Health Agency of Sweden's opposition to lockdowns, travel restrictions and face masks for general use, which were widely adopted in most countries to curb the spread of the virus, as well as for his ...

#29046

Alexander J. Dessler

#29057

Overall Influence

1928 - Present (98 years)

Alexander J. Dessler was an American space scientist known for conceiving the term heliosphere and for founding the first Space Science Department in the United States. Early life and education Dessler was born on October 21, 1928, in San Francisco, California, and received a B.S. in physics from the California Institute of Technology in 1952 and a Ph.D. in physics from Duke University in 1956. His PhD thesis was "The amplitude dependence of the velocity of second sound" under William M. Fairbank.

#29047

Andy Dalton

#29058

Overall Influence

1987 - Present (39 years)

Andrew Gregory Dalton is an American football quarterback for the Carolina Panthers of the National Football League . Nicknamed "the Red Rifle", he previously played for the Cincinnati Bengals, Dallas Cowboys, Chicago Bears, and New Orleans Saints. Dalton played college football at Texas Christian University, where he became the school's leader in quarterback wins and won the 2011 Rose Bowl. He was selected by the Bengals in the second round of the 2011 NFL Draft.

#29048

Jessica McKellar

Jessica McKellar

#29059

Overall Influence

1987 - Present (39 years)

Jessica Tess McKellar is an American software developer, engineering manager, and author. Education McKellar attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and studied computer science and chemistry.

#29049

Peter Dinklage

#29060

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Peter Hayden Dinklage is an American actor. He received international recognition for portraying Tyrion Lannister on the HBO television series Game of Thrones , for which he won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series a record four times. He also received a Golden Globe Award in 2011 and a Screen Actors Guild Award in 2020 for the role. Dinklage has a common form of dwarfism known as achondroplasia; he stands tall. He has used his celebrity status to raise social awareness concerning dwarfism.

#29050

John L. Fuller

#29061

Overall Influence

1910 - 1992 (82 years)

John Langworthy Fuller was an American biologist and early pioneer of behavior genetics. Fuller was a researcher at the Jackson Laboratory from 1947 to 1970 and professor of psychology at the Binghamton University from 1970 until retiring in 1977.

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