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

#29101

Dheeraj Sharma

#29112

Overall Influence

Dheeraj Sharma is a professor of management. He has been director of the Indian Institute of Management Rohtak since 2017, and is also a full professor on leave from Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. He is honorary professor of Jawahar Lal Nehru University India and University of Delhi, India. He is former associate editor of journal of marketing channels

#29102

Denice Denton

#29113

Overall Influence

1959 - 2006 (47 years)

Denice Dee Denton was an American professor of electrical engineering and academic administrator. She was the ninth chancellor of the University of California, Santa Cruz. Biography Early years Denton was born in El Campo, Texas, in Wharton County. She was the oldest child of Bob Glenn Denton and Carolyn Irene Drab. Denton earned her bachelor's and master's degrees , EE and PhD in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Denton spent two summers and an academic year in the late 1970s and early 1980s at Fairchild Semiconductor, where her projects included 64K static RAM design.

#29103

Edward Adelson

#29114

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Edward Howard Adelson is an American neuroscientist who is currently the John and Dorothy Wilson Professor of Vision Science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an Elected Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences and American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

#29104

Zdeno Chára

#29115

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (49 years)

Zdeno Chára is a Slovak former professional ice hockey defenceman. He played 24 seasons in the National Hockey League for the New York Islanders, Ottawa Senators, Boston Bruins, and Washington Capitals between 1997 and 2022. Standing at tall, Chára is the tallest person ever to play in the NHL, earning him the nickname "Big Z".

#29105

John F. Burke

#29116

Overall Influence

1922 - 2011 (89 years)

John F. Burke was an American medical researcher at Harvard University widely known for his co-invention of synthetic skin in 1981, together with Dr. Ioannis V. Yannas. Burke was also widely noted for developing a system of infection control in hospitals and showing that antibiotics given before surgery lower risks of post-operative infections. Burke was head of the Shriners Burns Institute and chief of trauma services at Massachusetts General Hospital, a professor of surgery at Harvard University.

#29106

Brian Cox

#29117

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Brian Cox was born in Lancashire, England in 1968. He is best known as a popularizer of science, having hosted Wonders of the Universe and many other shows produced by the BBC. He has authored popular science books Why Does E=mc²? and The Quantum Universe and has given a number of talks at TED on the topic of particle physics and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). While playing the keyboard for the group Dare, and later for D:Ream, Cox completed his BS and MPhil degrees in physics at the University of Manchester. After D:Ream disbanded, Cox finished his PhD in high energy particle physics, also at UMAN where he can still be found working as a professor of particle physics.

#29107

C.-T. James Huang

C.-T. James Huang

#29118

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

C.T. James Huang is a Taiwanese-American linguist. He is a professor of linguistics at Harvard University. Huang was born in a small township of Fuli, Hualien, in Taiwan. He received his B.A. and M.A. degrees from National Taiwan Normal University in 1971 and 1974, respectively, and in 1982 earned a Ph.D. in linguistics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received the Linguistic Society of Taiwan's Lifetime Achievement award in 2014 and was elected a Fellow of the Linguistic Society of America in 2015. In 2016, he was elected an Academician in the Convocation of the Academia Sinica's division of Humanities and Social Sciences.

#29108

Belinda Bencic

#29119

Overall Influence

1997 - Present (29 years)

Belinda Bencic is a Swiss professional tennis player. She has a career-high ranking of No. 4 by the Women's Tennis Association which she achieved in February 2020. Bencic has won eight career singles titles, including a gold medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, and two doubles titles on the WTA Tour.

#29109

Dolores O'Riordan

Dolores O'Riordan

#29120

Overall Influence

1971 - 2018 (47 years)

Dolores Mary Eileen O'Riordan was an Irish singer, musician and songwriter. She was the lead vocalist and lyricist of alternative rock band the Cranberries. One of the most recognizable voices in rock in the 1990s, she was known for her lilting mezzo-soprano voice, signature yodel, emphasized use of keening, and strong Limerick accent.

#29110

George M. Fredrickson

#29121

Overall Influence

1934 - 2008 (74 years)

George M. Fredrickson was an American author, activist, historian, and professor. He was the Edgar E. Robinson Professor of United States History at Stanford University until his retirement in 2002. After his retirement he continued to publish several texts, authoring a total of eight books and editing four more in addition to writing various articles. One of his best known works remains White Supremacy: A Comparative Study of American and South African History, which received the Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize and the Merle Curti Award as well as made him a finalist of the Pulitzer Prize for Hist...

#29111

Javagal Srinath

Javagal Srinath

#29122

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Javagal Srinath, is a former Indian cricketer and currently an ICC match referee. He is considered among India's finest fast bowlers, and was the first Indian fast bowler to take more than 300 wickets in One Day Internationals. With India, Srinath was a member of the Indian team that was the joint-winners of the 2002 ICC Champions Trophy, a title they shared with Sri Lanka, and was a member of the team that were runners-up in the 2003 Cricket World Cup.

#29112

Meghan Trainor

#29123

Overall Influence

1993 - Present (33 years)

Meghan Elizabeth Trainor is an American singer-songwriter and television personality. She rose to prominence after signing with Epic Records in 2014 and releasing her debut single "All About That Bass", which reached number one on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart and sold 11 million copies worldwide. Trainor has released five studio albums with the label and has received various accolades, including the 2016 Grammy Award for Best New Artist.

#29113

Jack O. Bovender Jr.

#29124

Overall Influence

Jack O. Bovender Jr. is the former chairman and CEO of Hospital Corporation of America from 2002 to 2009. Early life and career Bovender was born on August 16, 1945 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He attended high school in King, North Carolina. He began his career in hospital administration as a U.S. Navy lieutenant stationed at the Naval Medical Center Portsmouth. He continued to work in the health care industry until his retirement in 2009 from Hospital Corporation of America.

#29114

Dana H. Ballard

#29125

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Dana Harry Ballard was a professor of computer science at the University of Texas at Austin and formerly with the University of Rochester. Ballard attended MIT and graduated in 1967 with his bachelor's degree in aeronautics and astronautics. He then attended the University of Michigan for his masters in information and control engineering in 1970. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Irvine in information engineering in 1974. He did research in artificial intelligence and human cognition and perception with a focus on the human visual system. In 1982, with Christopher M.

#29115

Chris Fuller

#29126

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Christopher John Fuller is an emeritus professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics and a Fellow of the British Academy. He has studied and written extensively about the people of India, particularly with regard to subjects such as Hinduism, the caste system, and the relationship between globalisation and the middle-classes.

#29116

Herbert H. Reynolds

#29127

Overall Influence

1930 - 2007 (77 years)

Herbert Hal Reynolds was an American academic administrator who worked as the president of Baylor University from 1981 to 1995. Early life and education Reynolds was born March 20, 1930, in Frankston, Texas. He graduated from Trinity University in 1952 and received an M.A. in psychology from Baylor University in 1958, followed by a PhD in 1961.

#29117

Matt Cassel

#29128

Overall Influence

1982 - Present (44 years)

Matthew Brennan Cassel is a former American football quarterback who played in the National Football League for 14 seasons. A member of seven NFL teams, Cassel's most notable stints were with the New England Patriots and Kansas City Chiefs. He played college football at USC and was selected by the Patriots in the seventh round of the 2005 NFL Draft. Since retiring, he has served as a television football analyst on NBC Sports Boston.

#29118

Gregory G. Colomb

#29129

Overall Influence

1951 - 2001 (50 years)

Gregory G. Colomb was a professor of the English language and literature and director of writing programs at the University of Virginia. His research interests were in writing studies, 18th century literature, and theory.

#29119

François Noudelmann

#29130

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

François Noudelmann is a contemporary French philosopher, university professor and radio producer. François Noudelmann is currently a professor at New York University, and regularly at the University of Paris VIII , and European Graduate School in Saas-Fee . He is a member of the Institut Universitaire de France. Between 2001 and 2004, he was the director of the Collège International de Philosophie in Paris. Since 2019, he runs La Maison française at NYU.

#29120

Scott Malcomson

#29131

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Scott L. Malcomson is an author, former reporter, former U.S. government official, research fellow, and consultant in the United States. He was a foreign editor for the New York Times Magazine from 2004 until 2011 and has written for publications including Foreign Affairs, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Guardian, and The World Post. He has worked for Non-Governmental Organizations and was a senior official at the United Nations and U.S. State Department. Malcomson was a fellow in New America's International Security program. He reported and writes about issues such as globalism bas...

#29121

Pablo Parrilo

#29132

Overall Influence

Pablo A. Parrilo from MIT was named Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2016 for contributions to semidefinite and sum-of-squares optimization. He was named a SIAM Fellow in 2018.

#29122

Burt Neuborne

#29133

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Burt Neuborne is the Norman Dorsen Professor of Civil Liberties at New York University School of Law and the founding legal director of the Brennan Center for Justice. Career Neuborne graduated from Cornell University in 1961 and Harvard Law School in 1964. He served as National Legal Director of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1981-1986, Special Counsel to the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund from 1990-1996, and as a member of the New York City Human Rights Commission from 1988-1992. From 1995 to 2007, he directed the legal program of the Brennan Center for Justice.

#29123

Chuck Wendig

#29134

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (50 years)

Charles David Wendig is an American author, comic book writer, screenwriter, and blogger. He is best known for his online blog Terribleminds, for his 2015 Star Wars novel trilogy Aftermath, the first book of which debuted at No. 4 on The New York Times Best Seller list and No. 4 on USA Today best seller list, for which series he created the characters of Gallius Rax and marshal Cobb Vanth, the latter of whom would subsequently appear in the Disney+ series The Mandalorian and The Book of Boba Fett. Wendig has additionally written comics for Dark Circle Comics, Dynamite Entertainment, Marvel Co...

#29124

Paul Chamberlain

#29135

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Paul Chamberlain is a Canadian philosopher and professor. He teaches in the areas of Christian Apologetics, Ethics and Philosophy of Religion, and is also the Director of TWU's Institute of Christian Apologetics.

#29125

Mats Hillert

#29136

Overall Influence

1924 - Present (102 years)

Mats Hillert was a Swedish metallurgist who was an emeritus professor in metallography at the Royal Institute of Technology . Hillert was born in Gothenburg on 28 November 1924. He graduated from Chalmers University of Technology in 1947 with a major in chemical engineering. After finishing his military service, he joined the Swedish Institute for Metals Research in 1948. He investigated his options for postgraduate studies related to his new area, and took additional physics courses at KTH. In 1953, he moved to the United States for postgraduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned an Sc.D.

#29126

CM Punk

#29137

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (48 years)

Phillip Jack Brooks , better known by the ring name CM Punk, is an American professional wrestler and actor currently signed to WWE. Brooks began his professional wrestling career in 1999 on the independent circuit, mainly with Ring of Honor , where he won the ROH World Championship once. He signed with WWE in 2005 and won the WWE Championship twice, the World Heavyweight Championship three times, and the WWE Intercontinental Championship, the ECW World Heavyweight Championship, and the World Tag Team Championship all once each. He is the only back-to-back Money in the Bank ladder match winner...

#29127

Melvin Lax

#29138

Overall Influence

1922 - 2002 (80 years)

Melvin Lax was a distinguished professor of physics at City College of New York and was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1983, and notable for his contributions to research of random processes in physics. He was the chairman of the Theoretical Physics Department at Bell Labs from 1962 to 1964. He was also a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Optical Society of America.

#29128

Claude Ménard

#29139

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Claude Ménard is a Canadian economist and professor at the University of Paris I: Panthéon-Sorbonne. Ménard is also the creator and former director of the Centre d'analyse théorique des organisations et des marchés , which merged with the Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne in 2009, as well as a co-founder of the Society for Institutional & Organizational Economics . His research focuses on institutional and organizational economics.

#29129

Burhanettin Duran

#29140

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Burhanettin Duran is a Turkish political life scholar best known as author of academic studies on the transformation of political Islam under the rule of Justice and Development Party in Turkey. He is a former member of the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Istanbul Sehir University. He is currently the general director of the Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research , an Ankara-based think tank funded by Turkish government.

#29130

George Molnar

#29141

Overall Influence

1934 - 1999 (65 years)

George Molnar was a Hungarian-born philosopher whose principal area of interest was metaphysics. He worked mainly in the Philosophy Department at the University of Sydney but resided in England from 1976 to 1982. He published four philosophical papers in two separate spells; the first two in the 1960s and the second two after a return to the profession in the 1990s. His book Powers: A Study in Metaphysics was published posthumously in 2003.

#29131

Marc H. Ellis

#29142

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Marc H. Ellis is an American author, liberation theologian, and a retired University Professor of Jewish Studies, Professor of History and Director of the Center for Jewish Studies at Baylor University. He is currently visiting professor of several international universities, including the University of Innsbruck, Austria and the United Nations University for Peace, Costa Rica.

#29132

Donna Shirley

#29143

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Donna Lee Shirley is a former manager of Mars Exploration at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She is the author of the book Managing Martians: The Extraordinary Story of a Woman's Lifelong Quest to Get to Mars—and of the Team Behind the Space Robot That Has Captured the Imagination of the World.

#29133

Kirstie Alley

#29144

Overall Influence

1951 - 2022 (71 years)

Kirstie Louise Alley was an American actress. Her breakout role was as Rebecca Howe in the NBC sitcom Cheers , for which she received an Emmy Award and a Golden Globe in 1991. From 1997 to 2000, she starred as the lead in the sitcom Veronica's Closet, earning additional Emmy and Golden Globe nominations. On film, she played Mollie Jensen in Look Who's Talking and its two sequels, Look Who's Talking Too and Look Who's Talking Now .

#29134

Alex Woolf

#29145

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Alex Woolf is a British medieval historian and academic. He specialises in the history of Britain and Ireland and to a lesser extent Scandinavia in the Early Middle Ages, with a particular emphasis on interaction and comparison across traditional ethnic boundaries. He is a senior lecturer at the University of St Andrews.

#29135

Paul Curran

#29146

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Sir Paul James Curran was president of City, University of London between August 2010 and June 2021. Sir Paul is now professor emeritus. Following a period of significant progress, City joined the University of London Federation in September 2016. He served previously as vice-chancellor of Bournemouth University and deputy vice-chancellor at the University of Southampton, where he is currently a visiting professor. As a member of the senior management team at Southampton, progressing from head of geography to dean of science, Curran was credited with high-profile leadership as head of the W...

#29136

Gene Dresselhaus

#29147

Overall Influence

1929 - 2021 (92 years)

Gene Frederick Dresselhaus was an American condensed matter physicist. He is known as a pioneer of spintronics and for his 1955 discovery of the eponymous Dresselhaus effect. Biography Dresselhaus studied physics at University of California, Berkeley, receiving his bachelor's degree in 1951 and his doctorate in 1955. At Berkeley he worked under the supervision of Charles Kittel and Arthur F. Kip on early cyclotron resonance experiments on semiconductors and semimetals. As a postdoc Dresselhaus was for the academic year 1955–1956 an instructor at the University of Chicago. From 1956 to 1960 he was an assistant professor at Cornell University.

#29137

Dennis Peron

#29148

Overall Influence

1945 - 2018 (73 years)

Dennis Robert Peron was an American activist and businessman who became a leader in the movement for the legalization of cannabis throughout the 1990s. He influenced many in California and thus changed the political debate on marijuana in the United States.

#29138

Daniel Barbu

#29149

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Daniel-Constantin Barbu is a Romanian political scientist, publisher, essayist, journalist, and professor at the University of Bucharest's Faculty of Political Science. The head of the Research Institute at the University of Bucharest, and former dean of the Faculty, he was also director of Realitatea Românească, a daily newspaper, in 1991–1992. Barbu worked as a State Adviser for President Emil Constantinescu between 1997 and 1999. He is the author as of June 2007 of eight books and many more articles on political science, and a contributor to the magazine Sfera Politicii. He is also a membe...

#29139

Zach Braff

#29150

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Zachary Israel Braff is an American actor and filmmaker. He portrayed J.D. on the NBC/ABC television series Scrubs , for which he was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series in 2005 as well as for three Golden Globe Awards from 2005 to 2007. He starred in The Broken Hearts Club: A Romantic Comedy , The Last Kiss , The Ex , and In Dubious Battle . He has done voice-work for Chicken Little , Oz the Great and Powerful , and the Netflix series BoJack Horseman .

#29140

Johannes Aagaard

#29151

Overall Influence

1928 - 2007 (79 years)

Johannes Monrad Aagaard was a Danish theologian and evangelist. He was a professor of missiology at the University of Aarhus. He founded the Department of Missiology and Ecumenical Theology and the Center for New Religious Studies at the University of Aarhus. He was active in the Christian countercult movement as the founder of the Dialog Center International, an international educational organization concerned with groups it defines as cults and other new religious movements. He was a former president of the International Association for Mission Studies. He was a member of the Faith and Order Commission and was on the board of the Theological Educational Fund.

#29141

Steve Englehart

Steve Englehart

#29152

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Steve Englehart is an American writer of comic books and novels. He is best known for his work at Marvel Comics and DC Comics in the 1970s and 1980s. His pseudonyms have included John Harkness and Cliff Garnett.

#29142

Tim Kane

#29153

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Timothy Joseph Kane is an American economist and president and founder of The American Lyceum, a non-profit organization that seeks to promote solution-focused, civic debate. Kane was the J-P Conte research fellow at the Hoover Institution, where he specialized in immigration reform. He is a former U.S. Air Force intelligence officer with two overseas tours of duty. After leaving the service, Kane explored a career in start-up technology firms while pursuing a Ph.D. in economics. After working as a teaching professor of economics, Kane served on the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress and was director of the Center for International Trade and Economics at The Heritage Foundation.

#29143

Paola S. Timiras

#29154

Overall Influence

1923 - 2008 (85 years)

Paola S. Timiras, born Paola Silvestri, was an endocrinologist studying stress. Background and education Paola Silvestri was born on July 21, 1923, in Rome, Italy, just after Italy's takeover by Mussolini and his Fascist movement. Her father, a statistician and strong anti-Fascist, fled the following year to France, where his daughter visited often. Even as a girl, she dreamed of becoming a doctor, like her grandfather and uncle.

#29144

Francesco Casetti

#29155

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Francesco Casetti is an Italian naturalized US citizen film and television theorist. He is Sterling Professor of Humanities and Film and Media Studies at Yale University. He has been described as "the best analyst of cinematographic enunciation."

#29145

Antonio Casilli

Antonio Casilli

#29156

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Antonio A. Casilli is a Professor of Sociology at Télécom Paris, the school of telecommunications engineering of the Polytechnic Institute of Paris, and an Associate Researcher at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences. His research focuses on computer-mediated communication, labour, and fundamental rights. He has been a regular commentator at La Grande Table and Place de la Toile on France Culture.

#29146

Michiel van Lambalgen

#29157

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Michiel van Lambalgen is a professor of Logic and Cognitive Science at the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation and the Department of Philosophy, University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands.

#29147

Mark Azbel

#29158

Overall Influence

1932 - 2020 (88 years)

Mark Yakovlevich Azbel was a Soviet and Israeli physicist. He was a member of the American Physical Society. Between 1956 and 1958, he experimentally demonstrated cyclotron resonance in metals, and worked out its theoretical basis.

#29148

Miguel Civil

#29159

Overall Influence

1926 - 2019 (93 years)

Miguel Civil was an American Assyriologist and expert on Sumer and Ancient Mesopotamian studies at the University of Chicago Oriental Institute. According to his colleague, Christopher Woods, at the time of his death, Civil knew the Sumerian language better than anyone since it was last spoken 4000 years ago.

#29149

Carl W. Condit

#29160

Overall Influence

1914 - 1997 (83 years)

Carl Wilbur Condit was an American historian of urban and architectural history, a writer, professor, and teacher. He was professor at Northwestern University 1945–82. He wrote numerous books and articles on the history of American building, especially Chicago, Cincinnati, and the Port of New York. He founded the History of Science Department at Northwestern University, where he taught for over 30 years. His research specialty was the architecture of Chicago, Illinois, and he lived in Chicago most of his life, having moved there in 1945 in order to study its urban and technological developmen...

#29150

Rudolf Zahradník

Rudolf Zahradník

#29161

Overall Influence

1928 - 2020 (92 years)

Rudolf Zahradník was a Czech chemist in the field of quantum chemistry and molecular spectroscopy. He held research positions at the Institute of Occupational Medicine and went on to serve as the first director of the J Heyrovsky Institute of Physical Chemistry, president of the Czech Academy of Sciences and chairman of the Learned Society of the Czech Republic, after the Velvet Revolution. During the 1980s, he taught future German leader Angela Merkel, who was then on an internship in Czechoslovakia. He held a doctorate from the University of Chemistry and Technology, Prague.

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