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

#29451

Ann Shola Orloff

#29463

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Ann Shola Orloff is an American sociologist, specializing in Comparative-Historical Sociology, Gender and Social Inequalities, Sociological Theory and Political Sociology. She is a Professor of Sociology and Political Science and Board of Lady Managers of the Columbian Exposition Chair at Northwestern University. She is also editor of Social Politics, published by Oxford University Press, which she co-founded with Barbara Hobson in 1994.

#29452

Bob Braden

#29464

Overall Influence

1934 - 2018 (84 years)

Robert Braden was an American computer scientist who played a role in the development of the Internet. His research interests included end-to-end network protocols, especially in the transport and network layers.

#29453

Mika Tosca

#29465

Overall Influence

Mika Tosca is a climate scientist and faculty member at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her research concerns ways in which art and design can impact communication about climate science to more effectively address climate change. Tosca also contributes to science communication, including through science-art initiatives, and she is an advocate for Trans people in STEM, academia, and the media.

#29454

Bruce Hornsby

#29466

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Bruce Randall Hornsby is an American singer-songwriter and pianist. His music draws from folk rock, jazz, bluegrass, folk, Southern rock, country rock, jam band, rock, heartland rock, and blues rock musical traditions.

#29455

Francisco Moreno Fernández

#29467

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Francisco Moreno-Fernández is a Spanish dialectologist and sociolinguist. Career Moreno-Fernández holds a PhD in Hispanic Linguistics, is Professor of Spanish Language at the University of Alcalá and Alexander von Humboldt professor at Heidelberg University. Since acceptance of this professorship awarded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and endowed by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research he is directing the Heidelberg Center for Ibero-American Studies . He pursues research in sociolinguistics, dialectology, and applied linguistics. He has been Academic Director of the "Ins...

#29456

George Caffentzis

#29468

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

George Caffentzis is an American political philosopher and an autonomist Marxist. He founded the Midnight Notes Collective, is a founder member of the co-ordinator of the Committee for Academic Freedom in Africa and a professor of philosophy at the University of Southern Maine. His partner is Silvia Federici.

#29457

Laure Adler

#29469

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Laure Adler is a French journalist, writer, publisher and radio/TV producer. Works Biographies 1986: L'Amour à l'arsenic : histoire de Marie Lafarge, Denoël.1998: Marguerite Duras, Éditions Gallimard2005: Dans les pas de Hannah Arendt, Gallimard2008: L'insoumise, Simone Weil, Actes Sud2011: Françoise, Grasset .2012: Dans les pas de Hannah Arendt, Gallimard2015: François Mitterrand, journées particulières, Flammarion

#29458

Pierre Mertens

#29470

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Pierre Mertens is a Belgian French-speaking writer and lawyer who specializes in international law, director of the Centre de sociologie de la littérature at the Université Libre de Bruxelles, and literary critic with the newspaper Le Soir.

#29459

Walter Lincoln Hawkins

#29471

Overall Influence

1911 - 1992 (81 years)

Walter Lincoln Hawkins was an American chemist and engineer widely regarded as a pioneer of polymer chemistry. For thirty-four years he worked at Bell Laboratories, where he was instrumental in designing a long-lasting plastic to sheath telephone cables, enabling the introduction of telephone services to thousands of Americans, especially those in rural communities. In addition to his pioneering research, Hawkins is also known for his advocacy efforts for minority students. He also served as the chairman of Montclair State University in 1973. Amongst his many awards, Hawkins was the first Afr...

#29460

Gary Grove Koch

#29472

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Gary Grove Koch is an American biostatistician who serves as professor of biostatistics and director of the Biometric Consulting Laboratory at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he has been a faculty member since 1968. In 1972, he was elected a fellow of the American Statistical Association, and in 1974, he received the Mortimer Spiegelman Award from the American Public Health Association. In 1996, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from DeMontfort University in the United Kingdom.

#29461

Ira N. Levine

#29473

Overall Influence

1937 - 2015 (78 years)

Ira N. Levine was an American author, scientist, professor and faculty member in the chemistry department at Brooklyn College. He widely acknowledged for his research in the field of microwave spectroscopy, and for several widely known textbooks in physical chemistry and quantum chemistry.

#29462

Susumu Hirasawa

#29474

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

is a Japanese musician and composer. He is well known for his work for the films of director Satoshi Kon and the animated adaptations of the Berserk manga series, alongside his work as a solo artist.

#29463

Andy Harter

#29475

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Andrew Charles Harter is a British computer scientist, best known as the founder of RealVNC, where he was CEO until March 2018. Education and early life Born in Yorkshire in 1961, Harter attended the Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, Wakefield. He went on to the University of Cambridge, where he studied Mathematics and Computer Science as an undergraduate student of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge and a postgraduate student of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. His doctoral thesis, supervised by Andy Hopper, was judged the best UK Computer Science dissertation of 1990.

#29464

Savan Kotecha

#29476

Overall Influence

1901 - Present (125 years)

Savan Harish Kotecha is an American songwriter and record producer from Austin, Texas. Kotecha is of Indian descent. He was also the executive music producer of the 2020 film Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga, for which he wrote and produced several songs and performed one song.

#29465

Vijay Amritraj

#29477

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Vijay Amritraj is an Indian sports commentator, actor and retired professional tennis player from Madras. He was awarded the Padma Shri, India's 4th highest civilian honour, in 1983. In 2022, he was honored for his contributions to tennis in London by the International Tennis Hall of Fame and International Tennis Federation.

#29466

Peter Schumann

#29478

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (92 years)

Peter Schumann is the co-founder and director of the Bread & Puppet Theater. Born in Silesia, he was a sculptor and dancer in Germany before moving to the United States in 1961. In 1963 he founded Bread & Puppet in New York City, and in 1970 moved to the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, eventually settling in Glover, Vermont, where the company still performs. Schumann's best known work is the Domestic Resurrection Circus, performed annually by the Bread and Puppet Theater until 1998. He was married to theater co-founder Elka Schumann until her passing in August 2021.

#29467

Dieter Schmalstieg

#29479

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Dieter Schmalstieg is an Austrian computer scientist, full professor, and head of the Institute of Computer Graphics and Vision at Graz University of Technology. In 1993 he received a master of science diploma and in 1997 the degree of doctor of technical sciences. Currently he has over 300 peer-reviewed works which were cited over 20,000 times which brought him an h-index of 70.

#29468

Barbara Mikulski

#29480

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (90 years)

Barbara Ann Mikulski is an American politician and social worker who served as a United States senator from Maryland from 1987 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, she also served in the United States House of Representatives from 1977 to 1987. Mikulski is the third-longest-serving female United States Senator, and the longest-serving U.S. Senator in Maryland history.

#29469

Juhi Chawla

#29481

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Juhi Chawla is an Indian actress. She established herself as one of the leading actresses of Hindi cinema from the late 1980s through the early 2000s. Recognised for her comic timing and vivacious on-screen persona, she is the recipient of several accolades, including two Filmfare Awards.

#29470

Josh McDaniels

#29482

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (50 years)

Joshua Thomas McDaniels is an American football coach. He began his NFL career in 2001 with the New England Patriots, where he served as the offensive coordinator for 14 non-consecutive seasons. During McDaniels' first stint as offensive coordinator from 2006 to 2008, New England set the season record for points scored and won 16 of their 16 regular season games in 2007. In his second stint from 2012 to 2021, the Patriots won three Super Bowl titles. McDaniels was also among the Patriots personnel to be present for all six of their titles during the Brady–Belichick era.

#29471

César Gaviria

#29483

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

César Augusto Gaviria Trujillo is a Colombian economist and politician who served as the President of Colombia from 1990 to 1994, Secretary General of the Organization of American States from 1994 to 2004 and National Director of the Colombian Liberal Party from 2005 to 2009. During his tenure as president, he summoned the Constituent Assembly of Colombia that enacted the Constitution of 1991.

#29472

Víctor Neumann-Lara

#29484

Overall Influence

1933 - 2004 (71 years)

Víctor Neumann-Lara was a Mexican mathematician and a pioneer in the field of graph theory in Mexico. His work also covers general topology, game theory and combinatorics. Biography Born in the city of Huejutla de Reyes, Hidalgo, Mexico, he soon moved to Mexico City, where he received his bachelor's degree in mathematics from the School of Sciences, UNAM.

#29473

Lee Segel

#29485

Overall Influence

1932 - 2005 (73 years)

Lee Aaron Segel was an applied mathematician primarily at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the Weizmann Institute of Science. He is particularly known for his work in the spontaneous appearance of order in convection, slime molds and chemotaxis.

#29474

Lyle Lovett

#29486

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Lyle Pearce Lovett is an American country singer, songwriter, and record producer. Active since 1980, he has recorded 13 albums and released 25 singles to date, including his highest entry, the number 10 chart hit on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, "Cowboy Man". Lovett has won four Grammy Awards, including Best Male Country Vocal Performance and Best Country Album. His most recent album is 12th of June, released in 2022.

#29475

Allan Holdsworth

Allan Holdsworth

#29487

Overall Influence

1946 - 2017 (71 years)

Allan Holdsworth was a British jazz fusion and progressive rock guitarist, violinist and composer. Holdsworth was known for his esoteric and idiosyncratic usage of advanced music theory concepts, especially with respect to melody and harmony. His music incorporates a vast array of complex chord progressions, often using unusual chord shapes in an abstract way based on his understanding of "chord scales", and intricate improvised solos, frequently across shifting tonal centres. He used myriad scale forms often derived from those such as the Lydian, diminished, harmonic major, augmented, whole ...

#29476

Joan Armatrading

#29488

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Joan Anita Barbara Armatrading, is a Kittitian-English singer-songwriter and guitarist. A three-time Grammy Award nominee, Armatrading has also been nominated twice for BRIT Awards as Best Female Artist. She received an Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contemporary Song Collection in 1996.

#29477

Clayton Kershaw

#29489

Overall Influence

1988 - Present (38 years)

Clayton Edward Kershaw is an American professional baseball pitcher who is a free agent. A left-handed starting pitcher, Kershaw has spent his entire Major League Baseball career with the Los Angeles Dodgers since debuting in 2008. He is a ten-time All-Star, three-time National League Cy Young Award winner, the 2014 NL Most Valuable Player, and a World Series champion in 2020. His 2.48 career earned run average and 1.00 walks plus hits per inning pitched rate are the lowest among starters in the live-ball era . Kershaw has a career hits allowed per nine innings pitched average of 6.82, the third-lowest in MLB history.

#29478

Robert A. Martienssen

#29490

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Robert Anthony Martienssen is a British plant biologist, Howard Hughes Medical Institute–Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation investigator, and professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, US. Education Robert Martienssen attended Emmanuel College, Cambridge, completing his BA in 1982 and continuing on to his PhD in 1986 on the molecular genetics of alpha-amylase gene families in common wheat, supervised by David Baulcombe. He received an EMBO postdoctoral fellowship to travel to the University of California, Berkeley where he was a postdoctoral researcher with Michael Freeling from 1986-1988 whe...

#29479

Brad Bird

#29491

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Phillip Bradley Bird is an American filmmaker, animator, and voice actor. He has had a career spanning forty years in both animation and live-action. Bird was born in Montana and grew up in Oregon. He developed an interest in the art of animation early on, and completed his first short subject by age 14. Bird sent the film to Walt Disney Productions, leading to an apprenticeship from the studio's Nine Old Men. He attended the California Institute of the Arts in the late 1970s, and worked for Disney shortly thereafter.

#29480

Alan D. Taylor

#29492

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Alan Dana Taylor is an American mathematician who, with Steven Brams, solved the problem of envy-free cake-cutting for an arbitrary number of people with the Brams–Taylor procedure. Taylor received his Ph.D. in 1975 from Dartmouth College.

#29481

William Alfred

#29493

Overall Influence

1922 - 1999 (77 years)

William Alfred was an American playwright, poet, and professor of English literature at Harvard University. Biography Alfred was born into an Irish family in Brooklyn, New York. His father was a bricklayer and his mother was a telephone operator. He graduated from St. Francis Preparatory School in 1940.

#29482

Clive Woodward

#29494

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Sir Clive Ronald Woodward is an English former rugby union player and coach. He was coach of the team from 1997 to 2004, managing them to victory in the 2003 Rugby World Cup. He also coached the 2005 British & Irish Lions tour to New Zealand, losing the test series 3-0. He is currently a pundit for ITV Sport, working on their coverage of the Six Nations and Rugby World Cup.

#29483

Sybil Wolfram

#29495

Overall Influence

1931 - 1993 (62 years)

Sybil Wolfram was an English philosopher and writer, of German Jewish origin. She was a Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at Lady Margaret Hall at University of Oxford from 1964 to 1993. Work She published two books, Philosophical Logic: An Introduction and In-laws and Outlaws: Kinship and Marriage in England . She was the translator of Claude Lévi-Strauss's La pensée sauvage , but later disavowed the translation when she discovered the publisher had made changes to the translation that neither she nor Lévi-Strauss had authorized.

#29484

Eric McKitrick

#29496

Overall Influence

1920 - 2002 (82 years)

Eric Louis McKitrick was an American historian, best known for The Age of Federalism: The Early American Republic, 1788–1800 with Stanley Elkins, which won the Bancroft Prize in 1994. Life McKitrick was born in Battle Creek, Michigan. He graduated from Columbia University with a B.A. in 1949, an M.A. in 1951, and a Ph.D. in 1959. He taught at the University of Chicago and at Rutgers University's Douglass College in the 1950s, and Columbia University from 1960 to 1989 before retiring as an emeritus professor of history. In 1973–74 he was the Pitt Professor of American History and Institution...

#29485

Tracy Austin

#29497

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Tracy Ann Austin Holt is an American former world No. 1 tennis player. She won three Grand Slam titles, the women's singles titles at the 1979 and 1981 US Openss, and the mixed doubles title at the 1980 Wimbledon Championships. Additionally, she won the WTA Tour Championships in 1980 and the year-ending Toyota Championships in 1981, both in singles.

#29486

Gerard Butler

#29498

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Gerard James Butler is a Scottish actor and film producer. After studying law, he turned to acting in the mid-1990s with small roles in productions such as Mrs Brown , the James Bond film Tomorrow Never Dies , and Tale of the Mummy . In 2000, he starred as Count Dracula in the gothic horror film Dracula 2000 with Christopher Plummer and Jonny Lee Miller.

#29487

Sophia Rosenfeld

#29499

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Sophia Rosenfeld is an American historian. She specializes in European intellectual and cultural history with an emphasis on the Enlightenment, the trans-Atlantic Age of Revolutions, and the legacy of the eighteenth century for modern democracy. In 2017, she was named the Walter H. Annenberg Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania.

#29488

Otto Scharmer

#29500

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Otto Scharmer is a German academic who is a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and co-founder of the Presencing Institute . At Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he chairs the IDEAS Global Challenge program for cross-sector innovation and is the author/co-author of several books. He focuses on action research.

#29489

Simone Leigh

#29501

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Simone Leigh is an American artist from Chicago who works in New York City in the United States. She works in various media including sculpture, installations, video, performance, and social practice. Leigh has described her work as auto-ethnographic, and her interests include African art and vernacular objects, performance, and feminism. Her work is concerned with the marginalization of women of color and reframes their experience as central to society. Leigh has often said that her work is focused on “Black female subjectivity,” with an interest in complex interplays between various strands of history.

#29490

Greg Brown

#29502

Overall Influence

Greg Brown is a guitarist and founding member of the band Cake. Biography Brown played on the Cake albums Motorcade of Generosity and Fashion Nugget before leaving the band in 1998 prior to the recording of Prolonging the Magic. That album's liner notes indicate that some of his guitar arrangements were used. During his years as CAKE's guitar player, Brown primarily used a 1965 Guild Starfire III run through a Pro Co RAT distortion pedal into a Silvertone amp. Brown wrote or co-wrote several songs on Cake's first two albums, including their most popular single The Distance.

#29491

Subrata K. Mitra

#29503

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Subrata Kumar Mitra was director and research professor at the Institute for South Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore till May 20, 2018. Currently emeritus at the University of Heidelberg.

#29492

Ebadollah S. Mahmoodian

#29504

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Ebadollah S. Mahmoodian is a retired professor of mathematics at the Mathematical Sciences Department of Sharif University of Technology. He received his Bachelor of Science in 1965 at University of Tehran and his master's degree in 1968 at Shiraz University. He got a Master's and a PhD degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1971 and 1975, respectively. His thesis advisor were Albert Nijenhuis and Herbert Wilf. He was a professor of mathematics at the Mathematical Sciences Department of Sharif University of Technology since 1983. He co-edited Combinatorics Advances.

#29493

Christoph Zenger

Christoph Zenger

#29505

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Christoph Zenger is a German mathematician. Career Born in Lindau, Zenger studied physics at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and did a doctorate in mathematics in 1967. In 1973 he did his habilitation in mathematics and in 1977 he became professor of mathematics at Technical University of Munich. In 1980 he accepted an offer of a full professorship from the Bundeswehr University of Munich. In 1982 he returned to TU Munich to fill a chair in computer science. In 2000 Zenger was selected as a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities. He retired in 2005, but is still...

#29494

Burt Reynolds

#29506

Overall Influence

1936 - 2018 (82 years)

Burton Leon Reynolds Jr. was an American actor, considered a sex symbol and icon of 1970s American popular culture. Reynolds first rose to prominence when he starred in television series such as Gunsmoke , Hawk and Dan August . Although Reynolds had leading roles in such films as Navajo Joe and 100 Rifles , his breakthrough role was as Lewis Medlock in Deliverance . Reynolds played the leading role – often a lovable rogue – in a number of subsequent box office hits, such as White Lightning , The Longest Yard , Smokey and the Bandit , Semi-Tough , The End , Hooper , Starting Over , Smokey a...

#29495

Brandon Flowers

#29507

Overall Influence

1981 - Present (45 years)

Brandon Richard Flowers is an American musician, singer, songwriter and philanthropist. He serves as the co-founder, lead vocalist, keyboardist, and occasional bassist of the Las Vegas-based rock band The Killers, which he formed with Dave Keuning in 2001.

#29496

Kathleen Sebelius

#29508

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Kathleen Sebelius is an American politician who served as the 21st United States Secretary of Health and Human Services from 2009 until 2014. As Secretary of Health and Human Services, Sebelius was instrumental in overseeing the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. Before becoming secretary, she served as the 44th governor of Kansas from 2003 to 2009, the second woman to hold that office. She is a member of the Democratic Party. Sebelius was the Democratic respondent to the 2008 State of the Union address and is chair-emerita of the Democratic Governors Association . She is CEO of Sebel...

#29497

Victor Mature

#29509

Overall Influence

1913 - 1999 (86 years)

Victor John Mature was an American stage, film, and television actor who was a leading man in Hollywood during the 1940s and 1950s. His best known film roles include One Million B.C. , My Darling Clementine , Kiss of Death , Samson and Delilah , and The Robe . He also appeared in many musicals opposite such stars as Rita Hayworth and Betty Grable.

#29498

Thomas C. Butler

#29510

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Thomas Campbell Butler is an American scientist specializing in infectious diseases including cholera and bubonic plague at Texas Tech University since 1987. He is credited with making oral hydration the standard treatment for diarrhea.

#29499

Eugene A. Stead

Eugene A. Stead

#29511

Overall Influence

1908 - 2005 (97 years)

Eugene Anson Stead Jr. is best known as a physician, medical educator, and researcher. He served on the faculties at Harvard, Emory , and Duke universities. His research in the 1940s paved the way for cardiac catheterization in medicine today. He is the founder of the physician assistant profession.

#29500

Luke Bryan

#29512

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (50 years)

Thomas Luther "Luke" Bryan is an American country singer, songwriter, and television personality. His first ten albums – I'll Stay Me , Doin' My Thing , Tailgates & Tanlines , Crash My Party , Spring Break...Here to Party , Spring Break...Checkin' Out , Kill the Lights , Farm Tour... Here's to the Farmer , What Makes You Country , and Born Here Live Here Die Here – have included 30 number-one hits. Bryan often co-writes with Jeff Stevens. Since 2018, Bryan has been a judge on American Idol.

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