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

#34001

Beverly J. Silver

#34013

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Beverly J. Silver is an American scholar of labor and development whose work has been translated into over twelve languages. She is a professor of Sociology at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.

#34002

Craig Levein

#34014

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Craig William Levein is a Scottish professional football manager and former player who is currently the manager of Scottish Premiership club St Johnstone. During his playing career he played for Cowdenbeath and Heart of Midlothian, making over 300 league appearances for Hearts until he was forced to retire due to injury. He also won 16 caps for Scotland and was part of their 1990 FIFA World Cup squad.

#34003

S. Lewis Johnson

#34015

Overall Influence

1915 - 2004 (89 years)

Samuel Lewis Johnson, Jr. , was a conservative evangelical pastor and theologian, was for many years a professor at Dallas Theological Seminary. Johnson was a moderate dispensationalist and a Five-point Calvinist in his soteriology. He was a Biblical scholar and theologian of "rare abilities" and of international renown.

#34004

Gerald Haug

#34016

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Gerald H. Haug is a German geologic climatologist, prize winner of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize and since 2007 he has a professorship at the ETH Zürich in Switzerland. In 2015 he became director of the Climate Geochemistry Department and Scientific Member at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz and since March 2020, he became the new President of the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.

#34005

Nicola Scafetta

#34017

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Nicola Scafetta is a research scientist and at the University of Napoli Federico II. He was formerly at the ACRIM Lab group and an adjunct assistant professor in the physics department at Duke University. His research interests are in theoretical and applied statistics and nonlinear models of complex processes. He is notable for having controversial views on climate change.

#34006

Paul Jarrico

#34018

Overall Influence

1915 - 1997 (82 years)

Paul Jarrico was an American screenwriter and film producer who was blacklisted by the Hollywood movie studio bosses during the era of McCarthyism. Biography Early years Paul Jarrico was born in Los Angeles, California on January 12, 1915, as Israel Shapiro. His father was a Russian Jewish immigrant, a lawyer, poet and socialist. While attending UCLA, Jarrico joined the Young Communist League, where he became an active member of the American Communist Party. His alliance and association with the party lasted from 1937 to 1952. Jarrico married Sylvia Gussin in 1936. Sylvia's younger sister, ...

#34007

Gareth Evans

#34019

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Gareth John Evans AC, KC , is an Australian politician, international policymaker, academic, and barrister. He represented the Labor Party in the Senate and House of Representatives from 1978 to 1999, serving as a Cabinet Minister in the Hawke and Keating governments from 1983 to 1996 as Attorney-General, Minister for Resources and Energy, Minister for Transport and Communications and most prominently, from 1988 to 1996, as Minister for Foreign Affairs. He was Leader of the Government in the Senate from 1993 to 1996, Deputy Leader of the Opposition from 1996 to 1998, and remains one of the two...

#34008

Henry Cooper

#34020

Overall Influence

1934 - 2011 (77 years)

Sir Henry Cooper was a British heavyweight boxer. He was undefeated in British and Commonwealth heavyweight championship contests for twelve years and held the European heavyweight title for three years. In a 1963 fight against a young Cassius Clay , he knocked Clay down before the fight was stopped because of a cut to his eye. In 1966 he fought Clay, who was then world heavyweight champion, for a second time and again lost to an eye injury. Cooper was twice voted BBC Sports Personality of the Year and, after retiring in 1971 following a controversial loss to Joe Bugner, remained a popular public figure.

#34009

Vera Pless

#34021

Overall Influence

1931 - 2020 (89 years)

Vera Pless was an American mathematician who specialized in combinatorics and coding theory. She was professor emerita at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Biography Vera Stepen was born on Chicago's west side to a Russian Jewish immigrant family. As a teenager, she was more interested in playing the cello than in mathematics, but she left high school two years early to go to the University of Chicago, and finished her studies there in three years.

#34010

Lennart Philipson

#34022

Overall Influence

1929 - 2011 (82 years)

Carl Lennart Philipson was a Swedish virologist and professor at Karolinska Institute. He is well known for his research in respiratory viruses and his direction over several research institutions. Career Philipson earned his MD in 1957 and PhD in 1958 at Uppsala University, working with Arne Tiselius. He came to the United States in 1959 to do a postdoc at the Rockefeller University in virology, before returning to Sweden's Uppsala University to establish his own laboratory in 1961 with Jan Pontén.

#34011

Richard P. Binzel

#34023

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Richard "Rick" P. Binzel is an American astronomer and professor of planetary sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . He is a discoverer of minor planets, photometrist and the inventor of the Torino Scale, a method for categorizing the impact hazard associated with near-Earth objects such as asteroids and comets. He is also a frequent trip leader for the MIT Alumni Association.

#34012

Peter Marler

#34024

Overall Influence

1928 - 2014 (86 years)

Peter Robert Marler ForMemRS was a British-born American ethologist and zoosemiotician known for his research on animal sign communication and the science of bird song. A 1964 Guggenheim Fellow, he was emeritus professor of neurobiology, physiology and ethology at the University of California, Davis.

#34013

Werner A. Baum

#34025

Overall Influence

Werner A. Baum was the 2nd chancellor of University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and the 7th president of University of Rhode Island . Baum was a meteorologist by training and served as the president of the American Meteorological Society from 1977 to 1978.

#34014

Keno Fischer

#34026

Overall Influence

Keno Fischer is a German computer scientist known for being a core member implementing the Julia programming language . He is an alumnus of Harvard for both his BA and MA. He works at Julia Computing, which he co-founded with Julia co-creators, Alan Edelman, Jeff Bezanson, Stefan Karpinski, Viral B. Shah and Deepak Vinchhi. He received a B.A. in mathematics and physics from Harvard in 2016, and he completed a Master of Arts in Physics also from Harvard in 2016.

#34015

Edward A. Frieman

#34027

Overall Influence

1926 - 2013 (87 years)

Edward Allan Frieman was an American physicist who worked on plasma physics and nuclear fusion. He was the director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography from 1986 through 1996, and then the senior vice president of science and technology at the Science Applications International Corporation from 1996 on until his death in 2013.

#34016

James Dunbar-Nasmith

#34028

Overall Influence

1927 - Present (99 years)

Sir James Duncan Dunbar-Nasmith was a British conservation architect. James Dunbar-Nasmith was born in Devon, the son of Admiral Sir Martin Dunbar-Nasmith, and Beatrix Justina Dunbar-Dunbar-Rivers . His elder brother was Rear-Admiral David Dunbar-Nasmith, . He was educated at Lockers Park School, Winchester College and Trinity College, Cambridge.

#34017

Al Horford

#34029

Overall Influence

1986 - Present (40 years)

Alfred Joel Horford Reynoso , nicknamed Big Al, is a Dominican-Bahamian professional basketball player for the Boston Celtics of the National Basketball Association . Horford is a five-time NBA All-Star and is the highest paid Latin American basketball player.

#34018

Mark Van Raamsdonk

#34030

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Mark Van Raamsdonk is a professor at the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of British Columbia since 2002. Before that, he was a postdoc at Stanford University from 2000 until 2002 and studied as a graduate student at Princeton University from 1995 until 2000 when he received his PhD under the supervision of Washington Taylor. Before that, he did a combined mathematics/physics undergraduate degree at University of British Columbia where he graduated with what is believed to be the highest GPA in the university's prior history.

#34019

Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo

#34031

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo is an Equatoguinean politician and former military officer who has been the second president of Equatorial Guinea since 3 August 1979. He is the longest-serving president of any country ever and the second-longest consecutively-serving current non-royal national leader in the world .

#34020

John Rettaliata

#34032

Overall Influence

1911 - 2009 (98 years)

John Theodore Rettaliata was a fluid dynamicist who was president of Illinois Institute of Technology for 21 years, from 1952 to 1973, and served on President Dwight D. Eisenhower's National Aeronautics and Space Council, the predecessor to NASA. He received the American Society of Mechanical Engineers/Pi Tau Sigma joint Gold Medal in 1942, received the Distinguished Alumnus Award of Johns Hopkins University, was a National Honorary Member of the Triangle Fraternity, and held a lifetime position on the Museum of Science and Industry Board of Trustees. He also held the distinction of being one of the first people to fly in a jet aircraft.

#34021

Bruce Beresford

#34033

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Bruce Beresford is an Australian film director and screenwriter. He has made more than 30 feature films over a 50-year career, both locally and internationally in the United States. Beresford's films include Breaker Morant , Tender Mercies , Crimes of the Heart and Driving Miss Daisy , which won four Academy Awards including Best Picture.

#34022

Brigid Hogan

#34034

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Brigid L. M. Hogan FRS is a British developmental biologist noted for her contributions to mammalian development, stem cell research and transgenic technology and techniques. She is currently a Professor in the Department of Cell Biology at Duke University, Born in the UK, she became an American citizen in 2000.

#34023

Usha Goswami

#34035

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Usha Claire Goswami is a researcher and professor of Cognitive Developmental Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge, a Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, and the director of the Centre for Neuroscience in Education, Downing Site. She obtained her Ph.D. in developmental psychology from the University of Oxford before becoming a professor of cognitive developmental psychology at the University College London. Goswami's work is primarily in educational neuroscience with major focuses on reading development and developmental dyslexia.

#34024

Tekin Dereli

#34036

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Tekin Dereli is a Turkish theoretical physicist. Life and academic career He studied at Ankara Science High School and the Middle East Technical University. He was an associate professor and a Professor of Physics at Middle East Technical University ; professor at Faculty of Science at Ankara University , Leverhulme Visiting Professor at Lancaster University UK and since 2001, he is a professor at the department of physics at Koç University.

#34025

William David McCain

William David McCain

#34037

Overall Influence

1907 - 1993 (86 years)

William David McCain was an educator, archivist and college president. He was a recognized leader of the Mississippi political establishment and a leader in its struggle in the 1950s and 1960s to maintain racial segregationism and what he considered the "southern way of life." He served as Mississippi state archivist, a Major General in the Mississippi National Guard, a longtime leader and promoter of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, and as the fifth president and a major architect of Mississippi Southern College .

#34026

Seve Ballesteros

Seve Ballesteros

#34038

Overall Influence

1957 - 2011 (54 years)

Severiano Ballesteros Sota was a Spanish professional golfer, a World No. 1 who was one of the sport's leading figures from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s. A member of a gifted golfing family, he won 90 international tournaments in his career, including five major championships between 1979 and 1988; The Open Championship three times and the Masters Tournament twice. He gained attention in the golfing world in 1976, when at the age of 19, he finished second at The Open. He played a leading role in the re-emergence of European golf, helping the European Ryder Cup team to five wins both as a pl...

#34027

James Rutka

#34039

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

James Rutka is a Canadian neurosurgeon from Toronto, Canada. Rutka served as RS McLaughlin Professor and Chair of the Department of Surgery in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto from 2011 – 2022. He subspecializes in pediatric neurosurgery at The Hospital for Sick Children , and is a Senior Scientist in the Research Institute at SickKids. His main clinical interests include the neurosurgical treatment of children with brain tumours and epilepsy. His research interests lie in the molecular biology of human brain tumours – specifically in the determination of the mechanisms by which brain tumours grow and invade.

#34028

Mark H. Ashcraft

#34040

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Mark Henry Ashcraft is an American academic and the chair of the Department of Psychology at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. He received his PhD in cognitive psychology from the University of Kansas in 1975. He has published multiple books and articles on cognitive psychology, including:Human Memory and Cognition. Prentice Hall .Cognition. Prentice Hall; 4th ed. .

#34029

Frank Dellaert

#34041

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Frank Dellaert is a professor in the School of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is also affiliated with the IRIM@GT center and is well known for contributions to Robotics and Computer Vision.

#34030

Joel Quenneville

Joel Quenneville

#34042

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Joel Norman Quenneville is a Canadian–American ice hockey coach and former player in the National Hockey League . Nicknamed "Coach Q", he is second in NHL coaching wins at 969 behind Scotty Bowman. Quenneville achieved his greatest success as head coach of the Chicago Blackhawks, whom he led to three Stanley Cup titles between 2010 and 2015. His championship victory in 2010 was the Blackhawks' first since 1961, ending the then-longest Stanley Cup drought. He also served as the head coach of the St. Louis Blues from 1996 to 2004, the Colorado Avalanche from 2005 to 2008, and the Florida Panth...

#34031

Mariano Puerta

#34043

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (48 years)

Mariano Rubén Puerta is an Argentine former professional tennis player. He reached a career-high ATP world No. 9 singles ranking in August 2005. His career highlight of reaching the final of the French Open in 2005 was marred by testing positive for the banned substance etilefrine in a drugs test directly after the French Open final, for which he received an eight-year doping ban.

#34032

Victor Ponta

#34044

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Victor Viorel Ponta is a Romanian jurist and politician, who served as Prime Minister of Romania between his appointment by President Traian Băsescu in May 2012 and his resignation in November 2015. A former member of the Social Democratic Party and its leader from 2010 to 2015, he was also joint leader of the then-governing Social Liberal Union , an alliance with the National Liberal Party . Ponta was a member of the Romanian Chamber of Deputies for Gorj County from 2004 to 2020. In the Emil Boc cabinet, he was Minister-Delegate for Relations with Parliament from 2008 to 2009.

#34033

Norman Melchert

#34045

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (93 years)

Norman Melchert is a philosopher and author. He taught at Lehigh University from 1962 until his retirement in 1995. He is the author of several books, the most notable of which is his introduction to philosophy, The Great Conversation: A Historical Introduction to Philosophy.

#34034

Jacques Kallis

#34046

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Jacques Henry Kallis OIS is a South African cricket coach and former cricketer. Widely regarded as one of the greatest cricketers of all time and as one of the greatest all-rounders ever to play the game, he is a right-handed batsman and right-arm fast-medium swing bowler. , Kallis is the only cricketer in the history of the game to score more than 10,000 runs and take over 250 wickets in both ODI and Test match cricket. He also took 131 ODI catches. He scored 13,289 runs in his Test match career, took 292 wickets, and 200 catches. Kallis won 23 Man-of-the-Match awards, the most by any player...

#34035

Moto Hagio

#34047

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Moto Hagio is a Japanese manga artist. Regarded for her contributions to shōjo manga , Hagio is considered the most significant artist in the demographic and among the most influential manga artists of all time, being referred to as the "god of shōjo manga" by critics.

#34036

Pete Buttigieg

#34048

Overall Influence

1982 - Present (44 years)

Peter Paul Montgomery Buttigieg is an American politician and former naval officer who is currently serving as the 19th United States Secretary of Transportation. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the 32nd mayor of South Bend, Indiana, from 2012 to 2020, which earned him the nickname "Mayor Pete".

#34037

Ato Sekyi-Otu

#34049

Overall Influence

Ato Sekyi-Otu is a Ghanaian political philosopher. He was born at Saltpond, Ghana in 1941 and until 1971 was known as Daniel Sackey Walker. He was educated at Mfantsipim School, Cape Coast, where he was Head Prefect in 1960-61 and completed his Cambridge Higher School Certificate in 1961 with distinctions in Greek and Latin. He went to Harvard and received an A.B. in Government in 1966. He pursued graduate studies at the University of Toronto where he worked with the renowned Canadian political theorist C.B. Macpherson and received his PhD in 1971.

#34038

Joe Elliott

#34050

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Joseph Thomas Elliott is an English singer-songwriter, best known as the lead singer and one of the founding members of the hard rock band Def Leppard. He has also been the lead singer of the David Bowie tribute band the Cybernauts and the Mott the Hoople cover band Down 'n' Outz. He is one of the two original members of Def Leppard still in the band and one of the three to perform on every Def Leppard album. Elliott is known for his distinctive and wide ranging raspy singing voice.

#34039

Jean-Claude Sikorav

#34051

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Jean-Claude Sikorav is a French mathematician. He is professor at the École normale supérieure de Lyon. He is specialized in symplectic geometry. Main contributions Sikorav is known for his proof, joint with François Laudenbach, of the Arnold conjecture for Lagrangian intersections in cotangent bundles, as well as for introducing generating families in symplectic topology.

#34040

Paul Connett

#34052

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Paul Connett lives in Binghamton, New York. Paul Connett is a prominent water fluoridation critic, executive director of the Binghamton, New York based Fluoride Action Network , one of the largest organizations opposing water fluoridation worldwide. The Fluoride Action Network is funded, at least in part, by Joseph Mercola. Joseph Mercola has been identified by the Centre for Countering Digital Hate as the leading COVID disinformationist.

#34041

Bryce Harper

#34053

Overall Influence

1992 - Present (34 years)

Bryce Aron Max Harper is an American professional baseball first baseman, outfielder and designated hitter for the Philadelphia Phillies of Major League Baseball . He previously played for the Washington Nationals from 2012 through 2018.

#34042

Brian Redman

#34054

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Brian Herman Thomas Redman , is a retired British racing driver. Racing for Carl Haas and Jim Hall's Chaparral Cars, Brian Redman won the 1974, '75 and '76 SCCA Formula 5000 series and has raced in nearly every category of racing, including Formula One. The Englishman began racing in 1959 and collected his first of four Manufacturers Championships in 1968, driving a Ford GT40 with Belgian Jacky Ickx for John Wyer Automotive Engineering. Redman also won the 1970/71 South African Springbok series and the IMSA Camel GTP Championship in 1981 driving a Lola T600. Brian is considered to be one of the greatest endurance racers in the history of the sport.

#34043

Aya Chacar

#34055

Overall Influence

Aya Chacar is a professor of business in the United States. She is currently the Ingersoll Rand Chaired Professor at Florida International University. Biography Chacar was born in Lebanon where she studied engineering at the Ecole Supérieure des Ingénieurs de Beyrouth . She earned a master's in business administration degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute . Chacar completed her doctoral studies in Strategy and Organization at UCLA. She began her career at the London Business School then joined Florida International University in 2003.

#34044

René Préval

#34056

Overall Influence

1943 - 2017 (74 years)

René Garcia Préval was a Haitian politician and agronomist who twice was President of Haiti, from early 1996 to early 2001, and again from mid-2006 to mid-2011. He was also Prime Minister from early to late 1991 under the presidency of Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

#34045

Sérgio Rebelo

#34057

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Sérgio T. Rebelo is a Portuguese economist who is the current MUFG Bank Distinguished Professor of International Finance at the Kellogg School of Management in Illinois, United States. He is also a co-director of the Center for International Macroeconomics at Northwestern University.

#34046

Claus Westermann

#34058

Overall Influence

1909 - 2000 (91 years)

Claus Westermann was a German Protestant Old Testament scholar. He taught at the University of Heidelberg from 1958 to 1978. Biography Born to African missionaries, he finished his studies in 1933 and he became a pastor. During his theological studies he started studying the Old Testament, and became particularly interested in the content of the Psalms. During the Nazi regime he served in the German army for five years where he was a translator on the Russian front. After the war Westermann started preaching again and also went to teach Old Testament at Heidelberg, where he would continue to ...

#34047

Ferdinand Bohlmann

Ferdinand Bohlmann

#34059

Overall Influence

1921 - 1991 (70 years)

Ferdinand Bohlmann was a German chemist, known for his studies of plant natural products chemistry, especially terpenoids and polyynes. Life Bohlmann studied chemistry in Göttingen from 1939 to 1944 . His studies were interrupted by military service and injury. In 1946 he received his doctorate under Hans Brockmann on chromatography of pyridine compounds. He then worked under Hans Herloff Inhoffen at the University of Marburg. Bohlmann followed Inhoffen to the TH Braunschweig and completed his habilitation there. Bohlmann became a lecturer in 1952 and an adjunct professor in 1957. In 1959 he...

#34048

B. Sandhya

#34060

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

B. Sandhya is a retired officer of the Indian Police Service and a former Director General of the Kerala Fire and Rescue Services, Home Guard, and Civil Defence. She is also known for her literary contributions which have won her a number of awards including the Edasseri Award in 2007. She retired from the service with the rank of Director General of Police on May 31, 2023.

#34049

Brian Keating

#34061

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Brian Gregory Keating is an American cosmologist. He works on observations of the cosmic microwave background, leading the BICEP, POLARBEAR2 and Simons Array experiments. He received his PhD in 2000, and is a distinguished professor of physics at University of California, San Diego, since 2019. He is the author of two books, Losing The Nobel Prize and Into the Impossible.

#34050

Anthony Shriver

#34062

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Anthony Paul Kennedy Shriver is an American activist for people with intellectual disabilities. In 1989, he founded Best Buddies International, an international organization that helps people with intellectual disabilities to find employment and social opportunities. Through his mother, he is a nephew of World War II casualty Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and Senator Ted Kennedy.

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