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

#29301

James McLurkin

#29312

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

James McLurkin is a Senior Hardware Engineer at Google. Previously, he was an engineering assistant professor at Rice University specializing in swarm robotics. In 2005, he appeared on an episode of PBS' Nova and is a winner of the 2003 Lemelson-MIT Prize.

#29302

Robert Frank

#29313

Overall Influence

1924 - 2019 (95 years)

Robert Frank was a Swiss American photographer and documentary filmmaker. His most notable work, the 1958 book titled The Americans, earned Frank comparisons to a modern-day de Tocqueville for his fresh and nuanced outsider's view of American society. Critic Sean O'Hagan, writing in The Guardian in 2014, said The Americans "changed the nature of photography, what it could say and how it could say it. [ ... ] it remains perhaps the most influential photography book of the 20th century." Frank later expanded into film and video and experimented with manipulating photographs and photomontage.

#29303

Meaghan Morris

#29314

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Meaghan Morris is an Australian scholar of cultural studies. She is currently a Professor of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney. Life Born in Tenterfield, New South Wales, Morris was raised in Newcastle, New South Wales. Morris enrolled in a B.A. program in English and French at the University of Sydney. In Sydney, she met John Flaus, a film theorist and actor famous who would become a significant influence in the development of Australian cultural studies. She also became engaged in the work of British feminist scholar Juliet Mitchell and gave seminars on Mitchell's book...

#29304

Mathias Weske

#29315

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Mathias Weske is a German computer scientist, and Professor of Business Process Technology at the University of Potsdam, known for his contributions in the field of business process management and as a founder of the business Signavio.

#29305

Anthony de Jasay

Anthony de Jasay

#29316

Overall Influence

1925 - 2019 (94 years)

Anthony de Jasay was a Hungarian writer, economist, and right-libertarian philosopher. He studied in Székesfehérvár and Budapest, and obtained a degree in agriculture. He then worked as a freelance journalist, but emigrated from Hungary in 1948 after the Communist government nationalized his father's farm.

#29306

Chris Wallace

#29317

Overall Influence

1933 - 2004 (71 years)

Christopher Stewart Wallace was an Australian computer scientist and physicist. Wallace is notable for having devised:The minimum message length principle — an information-theoretic principle in statistics, econometrics, machine learning, inductive inference and knowledge discovery which can be seen both as a mathematical formalisation of Occam's Razor and as an invariant Bayesian method of model selection and point estimation,The Wallace tree form of binary multiplier ,a variety of random number generators,a theory in physics and philosophy that entropy is not the arrow of time,a refrigerati...

#29307

Bill Berry

#29318

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

William Thomas Berry is an American musician who was the drummer for the alternative rock band R.E.M. Although best known for his economical drumming style, Berry also played other instruments, including guitar, bass guitar and piano, both for songwriting and on R.E.M. albums. In 1995, Berry suffered a cerebral aneurysm onstage and collapsed. After a successful recovery he left the music industry two years later to become a farmer, and has since maintained a low profile, making sporadic reunions with R.E.M. and appearing on other artists' recordings. His departure made him the only member of the band to not remain with them during their entire run.

#29308

Shigemitsu Dandō

#29319

Overall Influence

1913 - 2012 (99 years)

was a professor of the department of Social and Political sciences at the University of Tokyo, an academic researcher of criminology, and a Justice of the Supreme Court of Japan. Overviews Dandō was born in Yamaguchi, and raised in Okayama Prefecture.

#29309

Miyuki Nakajima

#29320

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Miyuki Nakajima is a Japanese singer-songwriter and radio personality. She has released 44 studio albums, 48 singles, 6 live albums and multiple compilations as of January 2020. Her sales have been estimated at more than 21 million copies.

#29310

Pharoah Sanders

#29321

Overall Influence

1940 - 2022 (82 years)

Pharoah Sanders was an American jazz saxophonist. Known for his overblowing, harmonic, and multiphonic techniques on the saxophone, as well as his use of "sheets of sound", Sanders played a prominent role in the development of free jazz and spiritual jazz through his work as a member of John Coltrane's groups in the mid-1960s, and later through his solo work. He released over thirty albums as a leader and collaborated extensively with vocalist Leon Thomas and pianist Alice Coltrane, among many others. Fellow saxophonist Ornette Coleman once described him as "probably the best tenor player in ...

#29311

Maciej Lewenstein

#29322

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Maciej Lewenstein , is a Polish theoretical physicist, currently an ICREA professor at ICFO – The Institute of Photonic Sciences in Castelldefels near Barcelona. He is an author of over 480 scientific articles and 2 books, and recipient of many international and national prizes. In addition to quantum physics his other passion is music, and jazz in particular. His collection of compact discs and vinyl records includes over 9000 items.

#29312

Albert N. Whiting

#29323

Overall Influence

1917 - 2020 (103 years)

Albert Nathaniel Whiting was an American academic who was President and Chancellor of North Carolina College from 1966 to 1983. He was born in Navesink, New Jersey in July 1917, and served in the U.S. armed forces during World War II. He received his PhD from the American University in 1952. Whiting served as Dean of the Faculty of Morgan State College before becoming president and Chancellor of North Carolina College. He was married to Lottie Luck, who predeceased him in 2004 at the age of 85.

#29313

John Hedley Brooke

John Hedley Brooke

#29324

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

John Hedley Brooke is a British historian of science specialising in the relationship between science and religion. Biography Born on 20 May 1944, Brooke is the son of Hedley Joseph Brooke, and Margaret Brooke, née Brown. He was educated at King Edward VI Grammar School, Retford, then Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. On 30 August 1972, he married Janice Marian Heffer.

#29314

Ocean Vuong

#29325

Overall Influence

1988 - Present (38 years)

Ocean Vuong is a Vietnamese American poet, essayist, and novelist. Vuong is a recipient of the 2014 Ruth Lilly/Sargent Rosenberg fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, a 2016 Whiting Award, and the 2017 T.S. Eliot Prize for his poetry. His debut novel, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, was published in 2019. He received a MacArthur Grant the same year.

#29315

Pandurang Vasudeo Sukhatme

#29326

Overall Influence

1911 - 1997 (86 years)

Pandurang Vasudeo Sukhatme was an Indian statistician. He is known for his pioneering work of applying random sampling methods in agricultural statistics and in biometry, in the 1940s. He was also influential in the establishment of the Indian Agricultural Statistics Research Institute. As a part of his work at the Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, he developed statistical models for assessing the dimensions of hunger and future food supplies for the world. He also developed methods for measuring the size and nature of the protein gap.

#29316

Darrel R. Falk

#29327

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Darrel R. Falk is an American biologist. He is Professor Emeritus of Biology at Point Loma Nazarene University and is the past president and a current senior advisor with BioLogos Foundation, an advocacy group that emphasizes compatibility between science and Christian faith.

#29317

Steve Francis

#29328

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (49 years)

Steven D'Shawn Francis is an American former professional basketball player. He was selected with the second overall pick of the 1999 NBA draft and was named co-NBA Rookie of the Year in his first season. He was a three-time NBA All-Star while playing for the Houston Rockets. Francis also played for the Orlando Magic and New York Knicks, finishing his career with the Beijing Ducks of the Chinese Basketball Association. He was known for his crossover dribble, driving ability, and flashy dunks. He was given the nickname Stevie Franchise.

#29318

Marcella Althaus-Reid

Marcella Althaus-Reid

#29329

Overall Influence

1952 - 2009 (57 years)

Marcella Maria Althaus-Reid was Professor of Contextual Theology at New College, the University of Edinburgh. When appointed, she was the only woman professor of theology at a Scottish University and the first woman professor of theology at New College in its 160-year history.

#29319

Josiah Bunting III

Josiah Bunting III

#29330

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Josiah Bunting III is an American educator. He has been a military officer, college president, and an author and speaker on education and Western culture. Bunting is married and has four adult children. His half-brother is Dick Ebersol, the creator and former executive producer of Saturday Night Live; Ebersol and Bunting have the same mother.

#29320

Walter Höllerer

Walter Höllerer

#29331

Overall Influence

1922 - 2003 (81 years)

Walter Höllerer was a German writer, literary critic, and literature academic. He was professor of literary studies at the Technical University of Berlin from 1959 to 1988. Höllerer was a member of the Group 47, founder of the German literary magazine Akzente and the Literary Colloquium of Berlin .

#29321

Paul Gilbert

#29332

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Paul Raymond Gilbert is a British clinical psychologist. Gilbert is the founder of compassion focused therapy , compassionate mind training and the author of books such as The Compassionate Mind: A New Approach to Life's Challenges and Overcoming Depression.

#29322

Deron Williams

#29333

Overall Influence

1984 - Present (42 years)

Deron Michael Williams is an American former professional basketball player. He played college basketball for the Illinois Fighting Illini before being drafted third overall in the 2005 NBA draft by the Utah Jazz. A three-time NBA All-Star with the Jazz and Brooklyn Nets, Williams also played for Beşiktaş of the Turkish Basketball League during the 2011 NBA lockout, and was a gold medal winner on the United States national team at the 2008 and 2012 Summer Olympics.

#29323

Tim Conway

#29334

Overall Influence

1933 - 2019 (86 years)

Thomas Daniel "Tim" Conway was an American actor, comedian, writer, and director. From 1966 to 2012 he appeared in more than 100 TV shows, TV series and films. Among his more notable roles, he portrayed the inept Ensign Parker in the 1960s World War II TV situation comedy McHale's Navy, was a regular cast member on the TV comedy The Carol Burnett Show where he portrayed his recurrent iconic characters Mister Tudball, the Oldest Man and the Dumb Private, co-starred with Don Knotts in several films , was the title character in the Dorf series of eight sports comedy direct-to-video films , and provided the voice of Barnacle Boy in the animated series SpongeBob SquarePants .

#29324

Jameis Winston

#29335

Overall Influence

1994 - Present (32 years)

Jameis Lanaed Winston is an American football quarterback for the New Orleans Saints of the National Football League . He played college football at Florida State University, where he became the youngest player to win the Heisman Trophy and led his team to victory in the 2014 BCS National Championship Game during his freshman year. Declaring for the NFL after his sophomore season, Winston was selected first overall by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the 2015 NFL Draft.

#29325

Kurt Hohenemser

#29336

Overall Influence

1906 - 2001 (95 years)

Kurt Heinrich Hohenemser was a German-born American aerospace engineer and pioneer in the field of helicopter design. Life in Germany Kurt Hohenemser was born on January 3, 1906, in Berlin, Germany, to the German Jewish musicologist Richard Hohenemser and his English wife Alice Salt. He received his secondary education from the Goethe-Schule in Berlin-Wilmersdorf, Hermann-Lietz-Schule Haubinda, and Ziehenschule in Eschersheim. In 1924, Hohenemser received his Abitur. Hohenemser attended university at the Technische Hochschule Darmstadt from 1924 to 1929, receiving his Diplom-Ingenieur in 1927 and his Doktoringenieur in 1929.

#29326

Eric Lengyel

#29337

Overall Influence

Eric Lengyel is a computer scientist specializing in game engine development, computer graphics, and geometric algebra. He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of California, Davis and a master's degree in mathematics from Virginia Tech.

#29327

Vincent Kompany

#29338

Overall Influence

1986 - Present (40 years)

Vincent Jean Mpoy Kompany is a Belgian professional football manager and former player who played as a centre back and is the current manager of Premier League club Burnley. He most notably played for Manchester City for eleven seasons, where he was captain for eight of them and became widely regarded as one of the league's greatest centre backs. He also represented the Belgium national team for 15 years, seven as captain.

#29328

Rodney Cotterill

Rodney Cotterill

#29339

Overall Influence

1933 - 2007 (74 years)

Rodney Michael John Cotterill Order of the Dannebrog was an English-Danish physicist, and neuroscientist, who was educated at University College London , Yale and Cambridge University . He spent most of his career as a professor at the Technical University of Denmark, Denmark, after having spent five years as a researcher at the Argonne National Laboratory.

#29329

Joe Hart

#29340

Overall Influence

1987 - Present (39 years)

Charles Joseph John Hart is an English professional footballer who plays as a goalkeeper for Scottish Premiership club Celtic. He began his career at his hometown club Shrewsbury Town in the Football Conference and League Two. In 2006, he moved up to the Premier League with Manchester City, having attracted the attention of several other top-flight teams. In his first season, he spent time on loan at Tranmere Rovers and Blackpool. Hart had a loan spell with Birmingham City in the 2009–10 season, during which he was nominated for the PFA Young Player of the Year and was voted as the Premier League goalkeeper of the season in recognition of his performances.

#29330

Jamie Moyer

#29341

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Jamie Moyer is an American former professional baseball pitcher. Over his 25-year career in Major League Baseball , Moyer pitched for the Chicago Cubs, Texas Rangers, St. Louis Cardinals, Baltimore Orioles, Boston Red Sox, Seattle Mariners, Philadelphia Phillies, and Colorado Rockies.

#29331

Emil Zátopek

#29342

Overall Influence

1922 - 2000 (78 years)

Emil Zátopek was a Czech long-distance runner best known for winning three gold medals at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki. He won gold in the 5,000 metres and 10,000 metres runs, but his final medal came when he decided at the last minute to compete in the first marathon of his life. He was nicknamed the "Czech Locomotive".

#29332

Zedd

#29343

Overall Influence

1989 - Present (37 years)

Anton Zaslavski , known professionally as Zedd , is a Russian-German DJ, record producer, and songwriter. Zedd grew up and began his musical journey in Kaiserslautern, Germany. His stage name, Zedd, was derived from zed, the English pronunciation, barring American English, for the first letter of his surname, Z. In 2012, he released "Clarity" , which propelled him to mainstream success, reaching the 8th position on the Billboard Hot 100 and earning him a Grammy for Best Dance Recording at the 56th Grammy Awards. Later in 2012, he released his debut studio album, Clarity, with hit single "Stay ...

#29333

Nancy Olivieri

#29344

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Nancy Fern Olivieri is a prominent Toronto haematologist and researcher with an interest in the treatment of haemoglobinopathies. She is best known for a protracted struggle with the Hospital for Sick Children and the pharmaceutical company Apotex about the drug deferiprone.

#29334

Paul W. K. Rothemund

#29345

Overall Influence

Paul Wilhelm Karl Rothemund is a research professor at the Computation and Neural Systems department at Caltech. He has become known in the fields of DNA nanotechnology and synthetic biology for his pioneering work with DNA origami. He shared both categories of the 2006 Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology with Erik Winfree for their work in creating DNA nanotubes, algorithmic molecular self-assembly of DNA tile structures, and their theoretical work on DNA computing. Rothemund is also a 2007 recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship.

#29335

Lynn Vavreck

#29346

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Lynn Vavreck is an American political scientist and columnist. She is the Marvin Hoffenberg Chair in American Politics and Public Policy at University of California, Los Angeles and a contributing columnist to The New York Times.

#29336

Afshin Ghotbi

#29347

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Afshin Ghotbi is an Iranian-American football coach who works as head coach of Vancouver FC in the Canadian Premier League. Early life Afshin Ghotbi was born in Tehran. He is the son of a teacher in Iran with whom he left Iran at the age of 13 after his father remarried and moved to Los Angeles, where he has been a resident for more than two decades. He received his BSc qualification in Electrical Engineering from UCLA where he was a member of the football team.

#29337

Toichiro Kinoshita

#29348

Overall Influence

1925 - 2023 (98 years)

Tōichirō Kinoshita was a Japanese-born American theoretical physicist. Kinoshita was born in Tokyo on January 23, 1925. He studied physics at the University of Tokyo, earning his bachelor's degree in 1947 and then his PhD in 1952. Afterwards he spent two years as a postdoctoral researcher of the Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey, and then one year at Columbia University. His research interests included quantum field theory, and the Standard Model.

#29338

Dermot Turing

#29349

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Sir John Dermot Turing, 12th Baronet is a British solicitor and author. Education Turing was educated at Sherborne School and King's College, Cambridge. He then undertook a DPhil degree in the genetics of the fruit fly as a postgraduate student of New College, Oxford.

#29339

Pierre Deslongchamps

#29350

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Pierre Deslongchamps is a Canadian chemist, and professor at Université de Sherbrooke. He was a 1979 Guggenheim Fellow. Life He graduated from the Université de Montreal with a BSc in 1959 and from University of New Brunswick with a PhD in 1964. He studied at Harvard University with Robert Burns Woodward.

#29340

Terrie E. Moffitt

#29351

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

#29341

Armand Nicholi

#29352

Overall Influence

1928 - 2017 (89 years)

Armand M. Nicholi Jr. was a clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital. His clinical work and research focused on the impact of absent parents on the emotional development of children and young adults. He was the editor and coauthor of the classic The Harvard Guide to Psychiatry . He was also a founding board member of the Family Research Council.

#29342

Frederick Suppe

#29353

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Frederick Suppe is a professor Emeritus of philosophy at the University of Maryland. He has prominent work in the philosophy of science including much work with the semantic view of theories. Biography Suppe received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and has research interests in the philosophy of science, epistemology and metaphysics, philosophical theology and philosophy of gender.

#29343

Joanna Overing

#29354

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Joanna Overing is an American anthropologist based in Scotland. She has conducted research on egalitarianism, indigenous cosmology, philosophical anthropology, aesthetics, the ludic and linguistics through fieldwork in Amazonia. She has extensively studied indigenous Piaroa people in the Orinoco basin of Venezuela.

#29344

Barrie Keeffe

#29355

Overall Influence

1945 - 2019 (74 years)

Barrie Colin Keeffe was an English dramatist and screenwriter. Best known for his screenplay for the gangster classic The Long Good Friday , starring Bob Hoskins and Helen Mirren, Keeffe demonstrated an interest in a variety of social and political issues, including disaffected youth and criminality.

#29345

Glenn C. Altschuler

Glenn C. Altschuler

#29356

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Glenn Altschuler is an American writer and university-level educator and administrator. At Cornell University, he is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Emeritus Professor of American Studies and a Weiss Presidential Fellow. An animating force in American Studies, Altschuler taught large lecture courses in American popular culture and has been a strong advocate for the value of humanities and for high-quality undergraduate teaching and advising. He is a subject-matter expert on Popular Culture, Politics, and Higher Education in the United States.

#29346

Mamoru Ozaki

#29357

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (91 years)

Mamoru Ozaki was a Japanese high-level official. Career Mamoru Ozaki who was born in 1935 graduated from University of Tokyo in 1958. After the graduation, he entered the Ministry of Finance and moved up through the ranks to the level of Director-General of the Tax Bureau, the Commissioner of National Tax Administration Agency and Vice‐Minister of Finance.

#29347

Nico van Kampen

#29358

Overall Influence

1921 - 2013 (92 years)

Nicolaas 'Nico' Godfried van Kampen was a Dutch theoretical physicist, who worked mainly on statistical mechanics and non-equilibrium thermodynamics. Van Kampen was born in Leiden, and was a nephew of Frits Zernike. He studied physics at Leiden University, where in 1952 under the direction of Hendrik Anthony Kramers he earned his PhD with thesis Contributions to the quantum theory of light scattering. He showed in his thesis how to deal with singularities in quantum mechanical scattering processes, an important step in the development of renormalization, according to Kramers. Van Kampen made fundamental contributions to non-equilibrium processes and in many-body theory .

#29348

John G. Webb

#29359

Overall Influence

John G. Webb, M.D., FRCPC is a Canadian interventional cardiologist and the McLeod Professor of Heart Valve Intervention at the University of British Columbia. He is most well known for performing the first transfemoral and the first transapical transcatheter aortic valve implantation in the world both in 2005. He completed the first ever transcatheter mitral valve-in-valve replacement in 2009 and the first in-human TMVR to be completed with the Neovasc Tiara device in 2014. In addition, he was an investigator in the PARTNER trial, a randomized clinical trial demonstrating the efficacy of TAV...

#29349

Élie Barnavi

#29360

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Élie Barnavi is an Israeli historian and diplomat, who was the Israeli ambassador to France between 2000 and 2002. Born in Bucharest he moved as a child to Tel Aviv, Israel. He authored some fifteen books on France and Europe in the turmoil of the Religious Wars and on the contemporary history of Israel and of the Jewish people. He published numerous studies in professional journals in Europe, the US and Canada, as well as political articles in the Israeli and European press.

#29350

Qazi Azizul Mowla

#29361

Overall Influence

Qazi Azizul Mawla is a Bangladeshi architect, urban designer, and academic. He is vice-chancellor of the Leading University of Bangladesh. Previously, he was head of the Department of Architecture, BUET and founding chairperson of the Department of Architecture, Khulna University. Mowla is renowned for his curricular consultancy.

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