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

#29951

Diego García-Borreguero

#29963

Overall Influence

Diego García-Borreguero is the Director of the Sleep Research Institute in Madrid, Spain. Until 2005, he was Director of the Sleep Disorders Center at the Department of Neurology of the Fundación Jiménez Díaz . He has completed fellowships in sleep medicine and sleep research at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, USA and underwent residency training at the Max Planck Institute in Munich, Germany. He received his MD from the University of Navarre and completed his PhD at the University of Munich.

#29952

Doris Hart

#29964

Overall Influence

1925 - 2015 (90 years)

Doris Hart was an American tennis player who was active in the 1940s and first half of the 1950s. She was ranked world No. 1 in 1951. She was the fourth player, and second woman, to win a Career Grand Slam in singles. She was the first of only three players to complete the career "Boxed Set" of Grand Slam titles, which is winning at least one title in singles, doubles, and mixed doubles at all four Grand Slam events. Only she and Margaret Court achieved this during the amateur era of the sport.

#29953

Arthur Goldberger

Arthur Goldberger

#29965

Overall Influence

1930 - 2009 (79 years)

Arthur Stanley Goldberger was an econometrician and an economist. He worked with Nobel Prize winner Lawrence Klein on the development of the Klein–Goldberger macroeconomic model at the University of Michigan.

#29954

Bebeto

#29966

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

José Roberto Gama de Oliveira , known as Bebeto , is a Brazilian former professional football player who played as a forward. He entered politics in the 2010 Brazilian general elections and was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Rio de Janeiro representing the Democratic Labour Party.

#29955

Mark Lee Green

#29967

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Mark Lee Green is an American mathematician, who does research in commutative algebra, algebraic geometry, Hodge theory, differential geometry, and the theory of several complex variables. He is known for Green's Conjecture on syzygies of canonical curves. Green received in 1968 his bachelor's degree from MIT and in 1972 his PhD from Princeton University under Phillip Griffiths with thesis Some Picard Theorems for Holomorphic Maps to Algebraic Varieties. In 1970/71 Green was a Procter Fellow in Princeton. He was an instructor from 1972 to 1974 at the University of California, Berkeley and for the academic year 1974/75 at MIT.

#29956

Stephen Schiffer

#29968

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Stephen Schiffer is an American philosopher and currently Silver Professor of Philosophy at New York University. He is a specialist in the philosophy of language. Education and career Schiffer was awarded a B.A. in philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania in 1962 and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Oxford University in 1970. He taught at the University of California, Berkeley, University of Arizona, and City University of New York before moving to NYU. He was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007.

#29957

Robert Piloty

#29969

Overall Influence

1924 - 2013 (89 years)

Robert Piloty was a German computer scientist and former Professor of Communications Processing at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering of the Technische Universität Darmstadt. He was one of the pioneers in the construction of program-controlled computer systems and the founding father of computer science courses in Germany. As a member of the advisory board and chairman of the commission for the introduction of computer science studies in Germany, he was significantly involved in the introduction and design of computer science studies throughout Germany. His efforts also led to the establis...

#29958

Desmond Fernandes

#29970

Overall Influence

Desmond Fernandes is an author living in London. He is a member of the Campaign Against Criminalising Communities and he was a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography and The Geography of Genocide at De Montfort University, Bedford, England, and has published widely in a number of journals, including The Thailand Environment Institute Quarterly, Socialist Lawyer, L'Appel du Kurdistan, Armenian Forum, Kurdistan Aktuell, and Law, Social Justice and Global Development.

#29959

Baba Shiv

#29971

Overall Influence

Baba Shiv grew up in India and is an American marketing professor and an expert in the area of neuroeconomics. He is the Sanwa Bank, Limited, Professor of Marketing at Stanford Graduate School of Business, Stanford University. His work has been featured in The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, CNN, Fox Business, Financial Times, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Shiv received his PhD from Duke University.

#29960

Pavel Polian

#29972

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Pavel Markovich Polian, pseudonym: Pavel Nerler is a Russian geographer and historian, and Doctor of Geographical Sciences with the Institute of Geography of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He authored over 300 publications and is most known for his research on the history and geography of forced migrations.

#29961

Ekta Kapoor

#29973

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Ekta Kapoor is an Indian television producer, film producer and director who works in Hindi cinema and soap opera. She is the joint managing director and creative head of Balaji Telefilms Limited, which was founded in 1994. In 2001, Balaji Motion Pictures was launched as a subsidiary company of Balaji Telefilms Limited which is a film production and distribution company. She launched ALT Balaji in April 2017.

#29962

Björn Bjerke

#29974

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Björn Bjerke was a Swedish economist, professor in entrepreneurship and small firms at Stockholm University, known for the 1997 book "Methodology for Creating Business Knowledge" written with Ingeman Arbnor.

#29963

Daniel Ziblatt

#29975

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Daniel Ziblatt is an American political scientist and a professor at Harvard University with a research focus on comparative politics, democracy and democratization as well as the politics and political history of Western Europe. Since 2018 he has been Eaton Professor of the Science of Government at Harvard University. He is the author of the book Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy. In 2018, Ziblatt also published How Democracies Die with fellow Harvard professor Steven Levitsky. The book examines the conditions that can lead democracies to break down from within, rather than due to external events such as military coups or foreign invasions.

#29964

Clive Lloyd

#29976

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Sir Clive Hubert Lloyd , CM is a Guyanese-British former cricketer and captain of the West Indies cricket team. Lloyd is widely regarded as one of the greatest captains of all time. As a boy he went to Chatham High School in Georgetown. At the age of 14 he was captain of his school cricket team in the Chin Cup inter-school competition. One of his childhood memories is of sitting in a tree outside the ground overlooking the sightscreen watching Garry Sobers score two centuries for West Indies v Pakistan. Lloyd captained the West Indies in three World Cups, winning in 1975 and 1979 while losi...

#29965

Abel Ferrara

#29977

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Abel Ferrara is an American filmmaker, known for the provocative and often controversial content in his movies and his use and redefinition of neo-noir imagery. A long-time independent filmmaker, some of his best known movies include the New York-set, gritty crime thrillers The Driller Killer , Ms .45 , King of New York , Bad Lieutenant and The Funeral , chronicling violent crime in urban settings with spiritual overtones.

#29966

Ernest M. Henley

#29978

Overall Influence

1924 - 2017 (93 years)

Ernest Mark Henley was an American atomic and nuclear physicist. In 1944 Henley received a B.E.E. in electrical engineering from the City College of New York. From 1944 to 1946, he served in the U.S. Navy, decommissioning and repairing electrical equipment on ships and submarines. He worked at the Airborne Instruments Laboratory as an electrical engineer from 1946 to 1948. Between 1950 and 1951 he worked at Stanford University, and received a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in 1952. From 1952 to 1954, he was a Jewett Fellow and lecturer at Columbia University. In 1954, Henley accepted a faculty posit...

#29967

Ruth Anna Putnam

#29979

Overall Influence

1927 - 2019 (92 years)

Ruth Anna Putnam was an American philosopher and Professor of Philosophy at Wellesley College. Biography Ruth Anna Jacobs was born in Berlin on 20 September 1927. Her father, born Karl Adolf Rudolf Hermann Jacobs in 1901 in Gotha, was Hermann Jacobs, the great great grandson of the German scholar Friedrich Jacobs. Her mother Marie Jacobs, born Marie Kohn in 1901, was the daughter of Hans Nathan Kohn, the German physician after whom the "Pores of Kohn" were named. Ruth was the couple's only child.

#29968

Albert Piette

#29980

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Albert Piette is a French anthropologist and a professor at the Department of Anthropology at Paris Nanterre University. His research has focused on questions of observation, especially in the religious world. He describes and analyses details and ordinary forms in everyday life - what he named the minor mode of reality.

#29969

Bertil Gustafsson

#29981

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Bertil Gustafsson is a Swedish applied mathematician and numerical analyst. He is currently a Professor emeritus in the Department of Information Technology at Uppsala University, Sweden. Gustafsson is known for his work in numerical methods for time-dependent partial differential equations and its applications in fluid dynamics. He is the G in GKS theory for initial-boundary value problems which discusses the stability criterion for numerical approximations of initial–boundary value problems. Gustafsson has also authored a couple of books on the topic numerical methods applied to PDE.

#29970

Joseph M. Hellerstein

Joseph M. Hellerstein

#29982

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Joseph M. Hellerstein is an American professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, where he works on database systems and computer networks. He co-founded Trifacta with Jeffrey Heer and Sean Kandel in 2012, which stemmed from their research project, Wrangler.

#29971

James R. Dow

#29983

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (90 years)

James R. Dow is a Professor Emeritus of German at Iowa State University with research interests in German Volkskunde , Old Order Amish of Kalona and Amana Colonists of Amana. He took his doctorate from the University of Iowa in German literature in 1966. He taught at University of Wyoming before taking his permanent post at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa. Dow served for ten years as the editor of the Internationale Volkskundliche Bibliographie. He was also guest professor at the University of Bremen in Germany. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2005 for the study and grammar of the Cimbrian language, resulting in a highly regarded book Dow edited by the late Bruno Schweizer.

#29972

Klaus Hopt

#29984

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Klaus Jürgen Hopt is a German lawyer and prominent representative of German commercial law. Life In addition to his academic activities, Klaus J. Hopt has also been active and active. From 1981 to 1985 he was a judge at the Oberlandesgericht Stuttgart. From 1995 to 2001 he was a member of the former Takeover Commission; since 2002, he has been a member of the Takeover Board, which has been replaced by the Takeover Board, pursuant to § 5 of the German Securities Acquisition and Takeover Act at the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority . Since 2000, Hopt has been a member of the deputy of the German Juristage Day .

#29973

Steve Hofmann

#29985

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Steve Hofmann is a mathematician who helped solve the famous Kato's conjecture. Said Hofmann, “It's a problem that has interested me since I was a graduate student... It was one of the biggest open problems in my field and everybody thought it was too hard and wouldn't be solved. I had toyed with it for years and then put in three years of very serious work before hitting the key breakthrough.”

#29974

Paul Cantor

#29986

Overall Influence

1945 - 2022 (77 years)

Paul A. Cantor was an American literary and media critic. He taught for many years at the University of Virginia, where he was the Clifton Waller Barrett Professor of English. Cantor wrote on a wide range of subjects, including Homer, Plato, Aristotle, Dante, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, William Blake, Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley, Jane Austen, Romanticism, Oscar Wilde, H. G. Wells, Friedrich Nietzsche, Mark Twain, Elizabeth Gaskell, Thomas Mann, Samuel Beckett, Salman Rushdie, Leo Strauss, Tom Stoppard, Don Delillo, New His...

#29975

Robyn Eckersley

Robyn Eckersley

#29987

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Robyn Eckersley is a Professor and Head of Political Science in the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne, Australia. Background Eckersley grew up in Perth and graduated in law from the University of Western Australia. She studied at the University of Cambridge, and has a PhD in environmental politics from the University of Tasmania. She was previously a public lawyer, then a lecturer at Monash University until 2001 when she moved to the University of Melbourne.

#29976

Frances McDormand

Frances McDormand

#29988

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Frances Louise McDormand is an American actress and producer. In a career spanning over four decades, she has gained acclaim for her roles in small-budget independent films. McDormand has received numerous accolades, including four Academy Awards, two Emmy Awards, and one Tony Award, making her one of the few performers to achieve the "Triple Crown of Acting". Additionally, she has received three BAFTAs and two Golden Globe Awards.

#29977

Rami Yacoub

#29989

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Rami Yacoub , also known by the mononym Rami, is a Swedish record producer and songwriter and former member of the songwriting/production houses Cheiron Studios and Maratone. Yacoub collaborated extensively with Max Martin in the early part of his career. He has worked with acts such as Lady Gaga, Ariana Grande, Demi Lovato, Selena Gomez, Britney Spears, Nicki Minaj, Madonna, Charli XCX, Bon Jovi, Backstreet Boys, One Direction, Arashi, Westlife, The Saturdays, P!nk, Celine Dion, Enrique Iglesias, Tiësto, Avicii, NSYNC, 5 Seconds of Summer, Lindsay Lohan, Weezer and Måneskin.

#29978

Thomas Akers

#29990

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Thomas Dale Akers is a former American astronaut in NASA's Space Shuttle program. Education Akers was the valedictorian of his 29-member 1969 senior class from Eminence, Missouri. He worked summers as a park ranger in the 80,000 acre federal wilderness that borders Eminence. He graduated from the University of Missouri-Rolla with B.S. and M.S. degrees in applied mathematics in 1973 and 1975, respectively. At the age of 24, he returned to Eminence to become its math teacher, and subsequently its high school principal. In 1979, when a United States Air Force recruiter left brochures on his desk for his students, it was Akers who decided to sign up.

#29979

Stephen R. Barley

#29991

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Stephen R. Barley is an American organizational theorist and Christian A. Felipe Professor of Technology Management at the College of Engineering at the University of California Santa Barbara. Previously he was The Richard W. Weiland Professor in the School of Engineering at Stanford University and the Stanford Graduate School of Education. Barley's research focuses on the role of technology in organizational change and organizational/occupational culture.

#29980

Joel Embiid

#29992

Overall Influence

1994 - Present (32 years)

Joel Hans Embiid is a Cameroonian professional basketball player for the Philadelphia 76ers of the National Basketball Association , who also holds French and American citizenship. After one year of college basketball with the Kansas Jayhawks, he was drafted third overall by the 76ers in the 2014 NBA draft. The Embiid is a six-time NBA All-Star, a five-time member of the All-NBA Team and a three-time member of the All-Defensive Team. He was named the NBA Most Valuable Player in 2023.

#29981

Carles Puigdemont

#29993

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Carles Puigdemont i Casamajó is a Catalan politician and journalist from Spain. Since 2019 he has served as a Member of the European Parliament . A former mayor of Girona, Puigdemont served as President of Catalonia from 2016 to 2017 when he was removed from office by the Spanish Government following the unilateral Catalan declaration of independence. He is co-founder of the National Call for the Republic , leader of the Together for Catalonia electoral alliance and founder of the Together for Catalonia party.

#29982

Jeff Kuhner

#29994

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Jeffrey Thomas Kuhner is an American talk radio host and political commentator, heard on weekdays from 6 am to 10 am on WRKO AM 680 in Boston, Massachusetts. He was the editor of Insight on the News and a regular contributor to the commentary pages of The Washington Times, and his articles have appeared in Human Events, National Review Online and Investor's Business Daily.

#29983

Jim Leach

#29995

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

James Albert Smith Leach is an American academic and former politician. He served as ninth Chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities from 2009 to 2013 and was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Iowa .

#29984

Gavin Rossdale

#29996

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Gavin McGregor Rossdale is an English musician, best known as the lead singer and rhythm guitarist of the rock band Bush. He helped form Bush in 1992; on the band's separation in 2002, he became the lead singer and guitarist for Institute and later began a solo career. He resumed his role in Bush when the band reunited in 2010. In 2013, he received the British Academy's Ivor Novello Award for International Achievement.

#29985

Joseph O'Connor

Joseph O'Connor

#29997

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Joseph Victor O'Connor is an Irish novelist. His 2002 historical novel Star of the Sea was an international number one bestseller. Before success as an author, he was a journalist with the Sunday Tribune newspaper and Esquire magazine. He is a regular contributor to Raidió Teilifís Éireann and a member of the Irish artists' association Aosdána.

#29986

Svetlozar Rachev

Svetlozar Rachev

#29998

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Svetlozar Todorov Rachev is a professor at Texas Tech University who works in the field of mathematical finance, probability theory, and statistics. He is known for his work in probability metrics, derivative pricing, financial risk modeling, and econometrics. In the practice of risk management, he is the originator of the methodology behind the flagship product of FinAnalytica.

#29987

Wade Barrett

#29999

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (46 years)

Stuart Alexander Bennett is an English-American professional wrestling commentator, actor, and retired professional wrestler who holds both British and American citizenship. He is currently signed to WWE, where he performs under the ring name Wade Barrett as a colour commentator on the Raw brand.

#29988

Gabrielle Rocap

#30000

Overall Influence

Gabrielle Rocap is an American marine biologist and academic noted for her research on the evolution and ecology of marine bacteria and phytoplankton. She is one of the researchers who discovered microorganisms in the Pacific Ocean that consume arsenic to survive. She is currently a professor in the Oceanography department of the University of Washington.

#29989

Cain Hope Felder

Cain Hope Felder

#30001

Overall Influence

1943 - 2019 (76 years)

Cain Hope Felder was an American biblical scholar, serving as professor of New Testament language and literature and editor of The Journal of Religious Thought at the Howard University School of Divinity. He also served as chair of the Doctor of Philosophy program and immediate past chair of the Doctor of Ministry program. He had been on Howard's faculty from 1981 until his retirement in 2016.

#29990

Alan Garnett Davenport

#30002

Overall Influence

1932 - 2009 (77 years)

Alan Garnett Davenport was a professor at the University of Western Ontario and founder of its Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel Laboratory. He analyzed the wind's effect on a significant portion of the world's tallest buildings including the building formerly known as the CN Tower, Sears Tower, Citicorp Center, and the World Trade Center. He was a Member of the Order of Canada, Canada's highest civilian honor.

#29991

Tofail Ahmed

#30003

Overall Influence

1919 - 2002 (83 years)

Tofail Ahmed was a well-known Bangladeshi researcher of Folk Art. He was also a collector of Folk artifacts and has authored several books on Bangladeshi Folk arts and Crafts. He was awarded the Shilu Abed Karushilpa Award for his contribution to Folk Arts and Craft in 1998. He was also elected as an honorary fellow of the Bangla Academy in 2001.

#29992

Alta Charo

#30004

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Robin Alta Charo is the Warren P. Knowles Professor of Law and Bioethics emeritus at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and a leading American authority on bioethics. She held appointments in both Wisconsin's law school and medical school.

#29993

Mark Waid

#30005

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Mark Waid is an American comic book writer best known for his work on DC Comics titles The Flash, Kingdom Come and Superman: Birthright as well as his work on Captain America, Fantastic Four and Daredevil for Marvel. Other comics publishers he has done work for include Fantagraphics, Event, Top Cow, Dynamite, and Archie Comics.

#29994

Claude Welch

#30006

Overall Influence

1922 - 2009 (87 years)

Claude Raymond Welch was a historical theologian specializing in Karl Barth and nineteenth-century theology. He served as President and academic dean of the Graduate Theological Union in California.

#29995

Herman Philipse

Herman Philipse

#30007

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Herman Philipse is a professor of philosophy at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. Philipse taught at Leiden University from 1986 until 2003 where he obtained his doctorate in 1983. Work Philipse has written many philosophical works in Dutch, including books on Husserl's early philosophy of logic, the role of certainty in Descartes' moral theory, and a widely read Atheist Manifesto . In English, he has written over a dozen articles in philosophical journals, as well as a detailed assessment of Heidegger, Heidegger's Philosophy of Being: A Critical Interpretation. He has also written man...

#29996

Franz M. Wuketits

Franz M. Wuketits

#30008

Overall Influence

1955 - 2018 (63 years)

Franz Manfred Wuketits was an Austrian biologist, university teacher and epistemologist. He wrote extensively on epistemology, the history and theory of biology, evolution theory, evolutionary ethics, evolutionary epistemology and sociobiology.

#29997

Vanessa Ruta

#30009

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Vanessa Julia Ruta is an American neuroscientist known for her work on the structure and function of chemosensory circuits underlying innate and learned behaviors in the fly Drosophila melanogaster. She is the Gabrielle H. Reem and Herbert J. Kayden Associate Professor and Head of the Laboratory of Neurophysiology and Behavior at The Rockefeller University and, as of 2021, an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

#29998

Christine King

#30010

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Christine Elizabeth King, CBE, FRHistS, DL is a British historian and university administrator. She was Vice-Chancellor and Chief Executive of Staffordshire University from 1995 to 2011. King has published extensively on the Third Reich and is considered an expert on Nazi Germany. She was formerly head of the School of Historical and Critical Studies and Dean of the Faculty of Arts at Lancashire Polytechnic. In 1990 she was appointed Assistant Director of Staffordshire Polytechnic, which became Staffordshire University in 1992.

#29999

Kofi Anyidoho

#30011

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Kofi Anyidoho is a Ghanaian poet and academic who comes from a family tradition of Ewe poets and oral artists. He is currently Professor of Literature at the University of Ghana. He has received numerous awards for his poetry, including the Valco Fund Literary Award, the Langston Hughes Prize, the BBC Arts and Africa Poetry Award, the Fania Kruger Fellowship for Poetry of Social Vision, Poet of the Year , and the Ghana Book Award.

#30000

Stephen Leeder

#30012

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Stephen Leeder AO FRACP FFPH FAFPHM FRACGP is an emeritus professor of public health and community medicine at the University of Sydney, where he was dean of medicine from 1997 to 2002. Leeder is an adjunct professor of public health at the Western Sydney University, an adjunct professor of epidemiology at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health in New York. He held the position as chair of the Western Sydney Local Health District Board from 2011-2016.

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