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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School

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Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people

#35901

Paul Piccone

#35913

Overall Influence

1940 - 2004 (64 years)

Paul Piccone was an Italian-American philosopher, critical theorist, intellectual historian, and most notably the founder and long-time editor of the journal Telos. He was born in L'Aquila in Italy to a family that emigrated to Rochester, New York in the mid-1950s. In 1968, he and others started the journal Telos, which he edited until his death in 2004.

#35902

William F. Vallicella

#35914

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

William F. Vallicella is an American philosopher. Biography Vallicella has a Ph.D. , taught for a number of years at University of Dayton and Case Western Reserve University , and retired to Gold Canyon, Arizona from where he now contributes to philosophy mainly online. He is the author of many published articles, primarily on the subjects of metaphysics and philosophy of religion.

#35903

Robert Delort

#35915

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (94 years)

Robert Delort is a French professeur agrégé trained at the École Normale Supérieure in the early 1950s, historian and medievalist specialised in the history of the Republic of Venice, economic history and environmental history. He is particularly interested in the history of relationships between man and animals, as part of the “zoohistory”.

#35904

Robert T. Francoeur

#35916

Overall Influence

1931 - 2012 (81 years)

Robert Thomas "Bob" Francoeur Ph.D., A.C.S. was an American biologist and sexologist. Life and career Francoeur was born on October 18, 1931, in Detroit, Michigan. He earned a B.A. in philosophy and English at Sacred Heart College in 1953, a M.A. in Catholic theology at Saint Vincent College in 1957, a M.S. in biology at the University of Detroit in 1961, a Ph.D. in experimental embryology at the University of Delaware in 1967, and an A.C.S. in sexology at the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in 1979. He received the "Golden Brick Award" from the Center for Family Life Educ...

#35905

Rita McBride

#35917

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Rita McBride is an American artist and sculptor. She is based in Los Angeles and Düsseldorf. Alongside her artistic practice, McBride is a professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, and served as its director until 2017. McBride is married to Glen Rubsamen, an American painter from Los Angeles.

#35906

George Roy Hill

George Roy Hill

#35918

Overall Influence

1921 - 2002 (81 years)

George Roy Hill was an American film director. He is most noted for directing Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting , both starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Hill is also known for directing The World of Henry Orient , Hawaii , Thoroughly Modern Millie , Slaughterhouse-Five , The Great Waldo Pepper , Slap Shot , A Little Romance , The World According to Garp and his final film Funny Farm . According to one obituary "few directors achieved such fame and success... even fewer enjoyed such eminence for such a short period of time."

#35907

John Edwin Luecke

#35919

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

John Edwin Luecke is an American mathematician who works in topology and knot theory. He got his Ph.D. in 1985 from the University of Texas at Austin and is now a professor in the department of mathematics at that institution.

#35908

Michael Golomb

#35920

Overall Influence

1909 - 2008 (99 years)

Michael Golomb was an American mathematician and educator who was affiliated with Purdue University for over half a century. He was a student of Erhard Schmidt and Adolf Hammerstein, and received his doctorate from the University of Berlin in 1933. However, as a Jew, he had to leave Germany shortly afterwards to avoid Nazi persecution. After a short period in Zagreb in the former Yugoslavia, Michael Golomb arrived in the U.S. in 1939, when he turned to applied mathematics. He was one of the first mathematicians to apply normed vector spaces in numerical analysis. He taught mathematics at Pur...

#35909

Michel Berger

#35921

Overall Influence

1947 - 1992 (45 years)

Michel Berger was a French singer and songwriter. He was a leading figure of France's pop music scene for two decades as a singer; as a songwriter, he was active for such artists as his wife France Gall, Françoise Hardy or Johnny Hallyday. He died of a heart attack at age 44.

#35910

Alice Guionnet

#35922

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Alice Guionnet is a French mathematician known for her work in probability theory, in particular on large random matrices. Biography Guionnet entered the École Normale Supérieure in 1989. She earned her PhD in 1995 under the supervision of Gérard Ben Arous at University of Paris-Sud. Focuses of her academic research can be viewed in her thesis, Dynamique de Langevin d'un verre de spins .

#35911

Pieter Kasteleyn

#35923

Overall Influence

1924 - 1996 (72 years)

Pieter Willem "Piet" Kasteleyn was a Dutch physicist famous for his contributions to the field of statistical mechanics. Biography Pieter Willem Kasteleyn was born in Leiden on 12 October 1924. After finishing high school in 1942, Kasteleyn briefly studied chemistry in Amsterdam. After the war, Leiden University reopened, where he undertook the study of physics and graduated in 1951. He defended his Ph.D. thesis working under S.R. de Groot in 1956.

#35912

Irwan Prayitno

#35924

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Irwan Prayitno is an Indonesian politician who was serving as the governor of West Sumatra province. He was elected in the 2010 and 2015 election for the five-year period 2010–2015 and 2016–2021. Before his election as governor, he served as a member of Indonesia's Parliament from the election region of West Sumatra for three consecutive periods .

#35913

Andrew G. Walder

#35925

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Andrew G. Walder is an American political sociologist specializing in the study of Chinese society. He has taught at Harvard University and Stanford University, where he joined the faculty in 1997 and is the Denise O'Leary & Kent Thiry Professor of the School of Humanities and Sciences, and a Senior Fellow of the Freeman-Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University.

#35914

Paul S. Diamond

#35926

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Paul Steven Diamond is a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and a former federal judicial nominee to be a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. He was appointed a federal judge by George W. Bush in 2004.

#35915

Tom Izzo

#35927

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Thomas Michael Izzo ; born January 30, 1955 Izzo has led the Spartans to eight Final Fours in the NCAA Tournament, which include the NCAA National Championship in 2000 and a Runner-Up finish in 2009. His teams have won ten Big Ten regular season titles and six Big Ten tournament titles in his 28 years at Michigan State. Izzo has the most wins in school history and has appeared in 25 consecutive NCAA tournaments, the longest streak of tournament appearances all-time in men's college basketball. He has never had a losing season as a head coach. In addition, MSU set the Big Ten record for the longest home court winning streak between 1998 and 2002.

#35916

William Jaco

#35928

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

William "Bus" H. Jaco is an American mathematician who is known for his role in the Jaco–Shalen–Johannson decomposition theorem and efficient triangulations of 3-manifolds. He retired from Oklahoma State University in 2021 as Regents Professor Emeritus and appointed Adjunct Professor at Rice University in 2021.

#35917

Gérard Raulet

#35929

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Gérard Raulet is a French philosopher, Germanist, and translator, specializing primarily in the thought of Herbert Marcuse and Ernst Bloch. He is a professor emeritus of German History and Thought at the Paris-Sorbonne University.

#35918

Marty Glickman

#35930

Overall Influence

1917 - 2001 (84 years)

Martin Irving Glickman was an American radio announcer who was famous for his broadcasts of the New York Knicks basketball games and the football games of the New York Giants and the New York Jets. Glickman was a noted track and field athlete and football star at Syracuse University. He was a member of the U.S. team at the 1936 Summer Olympic Games held in Berlin, Germany. The unexplained, last-minute decision to remove Glickman and Sam Stoller—a fellow Jewish American athlete—from the 100-meter relay at the 1936 Olympics, where they were replaced by Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalfe, who easily...

#35919

Booker T. Jones

#35931

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Booker Taliaferro Jones Jr. is an American musician, songwriter, record producer and arranger, best known as the frontman of the band Booker T. & the M.G.'s. He has also worked in the studios with many well-known artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, earning him a Grammy Award for lifetime achievement.

#35920

Rudolf Muradyan

#35932

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (90 years)

Rudolf Muradovich Muradyan is an Armenian theoretical physicist. Rudolf Muradyan's main research relate to theoretical physics, elementary-particle physics, cosmology and the origin of the Universe. Considering the properties of the interaction of elementary particles, he proposed the possibility of large-scale invariance in high-energy physics, from which the "Matveev-Muradyan-Tavkhelidze quark counting rule" is derived especially. He also researched the connection between the appearance of the Universe's rotation and magnetic fields and the cosmological constant. He is the recipient of the ...

#35921

James Seaton

#35933

Overall Influence

1944 - 2017 (73 years)

James Everett Seaton was an American writer, professor and literary critic. He argued for the continued relevance and importance of the tradition of literary humanism championed by Matthew Arnold and later, Irving Babbitt and Paul Elmer Moore. At the same time he opposed many of the dominant trends in Academia regarding literary criticism and the teaching of literature, such as the Cultural Studies model instituted by Stuart Hall and the general emphasis away from the study of literary works themselves in favor of a focus on critical theory.

#35922

Shigeo Ohno

#35934

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Shigeo Ohno is a Japanese molecular biologist known for his pioneer research on Protein Kinase C and Cell Polarity. His works led to the fundamental understanding of cell polarity in response to cell signaling.

#35923

Piotr S. Wandycz

#35935

Overall Influence

1923 - 2017 (94 years)

Piotr Stefan Wandycz was a Polish-American historian. He was also the President of the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences of America, and professor emeritus at Yale University, specializing in Eastern and Central European history.

#35924

Peter Hocken

#35936

Overall Influence

1932 - 2017 (85 years)

Peter Hocken was a British theologian and historian of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal and the Pentecostal movement in the twentieth century. Born in Brighton, England, Hocken was ordained a priest in the Roman Catholic Church for the Diocese of Northampton in 1964. He lectured in moral theology at Oscott College, Birmingham, England . He obtained permission to leave the country in order to join the Mother of God Community, Washington, United States, where he was an active member between 1976 and 1996. He regularly contributed to the community's devotional magazine, "The Word Among Us". I...

#35925

Elisabeth Pate-Cornell

Elisabeth Pate-Cornell

#35937

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Marie-Elisabeth Lucienne Paté-Cornell, , is a Stanford University Professor in the Department of Management Science and Engineering and was the Founding Chair of the Department. Pate-Cornell is an expert in engineering risk analysis and management and more generally, the use of Bayesian probability to process incomplete information. Her research and that of her Engineering Risk Research Group have focused on the inclusion of technical and management factors in probabilistic risk analysis models with applications to the NASA shuttle tiles, offshore oil platforms and medical systems. Since 2001,...

#35926

Colette Inez

#35938

Overall Influence

1931 - 2018 (87 years)

Colette Inez was an American poet and a faculty member at Columbia University’s Undergraduate Writing Program. She published ten poetry collections and won the Guggenheim Fellowship, Rockefeller Fellowship, and two National Endowment for the Arts and two Prizes and many other awards. Her memoir, The Secret of M. Dulong, was released in 2008 by The University of Wisconsin Press.

#35927

R. Geraint Gruffydd

#35939

Overall Influence

1928 - 2015 (87 years)

Robert Geraint Gruffydd FLSW FBA was a scholar of Welsh language and literature. From 1970 to 1979, he was Professor of Welsh Language and Literature at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, and was made Emeritus Professor in 1993.

#35928

Marco Brambilla

Marco Brambilla

#35940

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Marco Brambilla is an Italian-born Canadian contemporary artist and film director, known for re-contextualizations of popular and found imagery, and use of 3D imaging technologies in public installations and video art.

#35929

Max Cleland

#35941

Overall Influence

1942 - 2021 (79 years)

Joseph Maxwell Cleland was an American politician from Georgia. A member of the Democratic Party, he was a disabled U.S. Army veteran of the Vietnam War, a recipient of the Silver Star and the Bronze Star for valorous actions in combat, as well as a United States Senator .

#35930

Ingrid Johnsrude

#35942

Overall Influence

Ingrid Suzanne Johnsrude is a Canadian neuroscientist, a professor of psychology at University of Western Ontario, and was the holder of the Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Neuroscience. Her research involves brain imaging, the connections between brain structure and language ability, and the diagnosis of degenerative brain diseases in the elderly.

#35931

Edmond Bonan

#35943

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Edmond Bonan is a French mathematician, known particularly for his work on special holonomy. Biography After completing his undergraduate studies at the École polytechnique, Bonan went on to write his 1967 University of Paris doctoral dissertation in Differential geometry under the supervision of André Lichnerowicz. From 1968 to 1997, he held the post of lecturer and then professor at the University of Picardie Jules Verne in Amiens, where he currently holds the title of professor emeritus. Early in his career, from 1969 to 1981, he also lectured at the École Polytechnique.

#35932

Riccardo Rattazzi

Riccardo Rattazzi

#35944

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Riccardo Rattazzi is an Italian theoretical physicist and a professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. His main research interests are in physics beyond the Standard Model and in cosmology.

#35933

Trevor Linden

#35945

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Trevor John Linden is a Canadian former professional ice hockey player and former president of hockey operations and alternate governor of the Vancouver Canucks. He spent 19 seasons in the National Hockey League , playing centre and right wing with four teams: the Vancouver Canucks , New York Islanders, Montreal Canadiens and Washington Capitals. Before joining the NHL in 1988, Linden helped the Medicine Hat Tigers of the Western Hockey League win consecutive Memorial Cup championships. In addition to appearing in two NHL All-Star Games, Linden was a member of the 1998 Canadian Olympic team...

#35934

Stewart Cole

#35946

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Sir Stewart Thomas Cole is a British/French microbiologist. He has been the director general of the Pasteur Institute since January 2018. Early life and education Cole grew up in Wales, where he was educated at Milford Haven Grammar School and then at Ardwyn Grammar School, Aberystwyth. Following a life-threatening bout of paratyphoid he developed an interest in bacteria, viruses and infectious diseases, which led to his reading microbiology at the University of Wales, in Cardiff followed by research for his PhD at the University of Sheffield, England. Subsequently, he was a postdoctoral f...

#35935

Deborah C. Poff

#35947

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Deborah C. Poff is a Canadian philosopher, educator, and journal editor. Deborah C. Poff is the former President and Vice-Chancellor at Brandon University in Brandon, Manitoba. She serves as editor of two major publications in the field of ethics. She was the Vice-President for Strategic Development at the Pacific Coast University for Workplace Health Sciences, Canada, before retiring.

#35936

Christopher Cross

#35948

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Christopher Cross is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist from San Antonio, Texas. He won five Grammy Awards for his eponymous debut album released in 1979. The singles "Sailing" , and "Arthur's Theme " peaked at number one on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100. "Sailing" earned three Grammys in 1980, while "Arthur's Theme" won the Oscar for Best Original Song in 1980 .

#35937

Jemma Field

#35949

Overall Influence

Jemma Field is a historian and art historian from New Zealand. She studied for her PhD with Erin Griffey at the University of Auckland. She was subsequently a Marie Skłodowska-Curie postdoctoral fellow at Brunel University, London. She is currently Associate Director of Research at the Yale Center for British Art.

#35938

Lance J. Dixon

#35950

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Lance Jenkins Dixon is an American theoretical particle physicist. He is a professor in the SLAC Theory Group at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center at Stanford University. Dixon received in 1982 his B.S. in physics and applied mathematics from Caltech and received in 1986 his doctorate from Princeton University. As a postdoc he was at SLAC. From 1987 he was assistant professor at Princeton University, from 1989 he was a Panofsky Fellow at the SLAC and in 1992 he became an associate professor and in 1998 a full professor at SLAC.

#35939

Marc Rosset

#35951

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Marc Rosset is a Swiss former professional tennis player. He is best known for winning the men's singles gold medal at the 1992 Summer Olympics. He also won a major doubles title, at the French Open in 1992 partnering compatriot Jakob Hlasek.

#35940

Dariusz Gawin

#35952

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Dariusz Gawin is a Polish historian and sociologist, deputy director of the Warsaw Uprising Museum dedicated to the memory of the Warsaw Uprising of 1944, and located in the Wola district of Warsaw, Poland. Gawin serves as an Adiunkt at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He is a contributor to leading Polish magazines such as Przegląd Polityczny, Res Publica Nowa, Tygodnik Powszechny and Rzeczpospolita, as well as historical and scientific journals such as Teologia Polityczna and Krytyka Polityczna. He was the host of a TV programme Trzeci punkt widz...

#35941

Jun Kaneko

#35953

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Jun Kaneko is a Japanese-born American ceramic artist known for creating large scale ceramic sculpture. Based out of a studio warehouse in Omaha, Nebraska, Kaneko primarily works in clay to explore the effects of repeated abstract surface motifs by using ceramic glaze.

#35942

Lowell Weicker

#35954

Overall Influence

1931 - 2023 (92 years)

Lowell Palmer Weicker Jr. was an American politician who served as a U.S. Representative, U.S. Senator, and the 85th Governor of Connecticut. Weicker unsuccessfully sought the Republican nomination for president in 1980. One of the first Republican members of Congress to express concerns about President Richard Nixon's role in the Watergate scandal, Weicker developed a reputation as a "Rockefeller Republican", eventually leading conservative activists to endorse his opponent Joe Lieberman, a New Democrat, in the 1988 Senate election which he subsequently lost. Weicker later left the Republica...

#35943

Paul Tergat

#35955

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Paul Kibii Tergat is a Kenyan former professional long distance runner. He became the first Kenyan man to set the world record in the marathon in 2003, with a time of 2:04:55, and is regarded as one of the most accomplished long-distance runners of all time. Runnerworld called him the "Most comprehensive runner of all time".

#35944

Bo Ralph

#35956

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Bo Rune Ingemar Ralph is a Swedish linguist, member of the Swedish Academy, and professor of Nordic Languages at the Department of Swedish Language at Gothenburg University. He was elected to the Swedish Academy on 15 April 1999 and admitted on 20 December 1999. Bo Ralph succeeded the philosopher and sociologist Torgny T:son Segerstedt to Seat No.2.

#35945

Bruce Kingma

#35957

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Bruce Kingma is an American economist and academic entrepreneur, who since 1988 has taught and worked in the United States, Canada, and New Zealand. Kingma is a pioneer in experiential entrepreneurship education and community engagement and his work cover topics ranging from academic entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship and religion, information economics, online education, community engagement, library science, and nonprofit management.

#35946

Lynn Steen

#35958

Overall Influence

1941 - 2015 (74 years)

Lynn Arthur Steen was an American mathematician who was a professor of mathematics at St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota, in the U.S. He wrote numerous books and articles on the teaching of mathematics. He was a past president of the Mathematics Association of America and served as chairman of the Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences.

#35947

Toomas Asser

#35959

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Toomas Asser is an Estonian medical scientist. He has been a member of the Estonian Academy of Sciences since 2011 and the Rector of the University of Tartu since 1 August 2018. His research focuses on clinical and molecular-biological aspects of brain tumors, pituitary surgery, surgical treatment of intracranial aneurysms, functional surgery and spinal cord injuries.

#35948

Dan Gordon

#35960

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Dan Gordon is an Israeli-American screenwriter, television writer, television producer, television director, film producer, novelist, playwright, film director, and reserve duty captain in the Israel Defense Forces.

#35949

Sami Selçuk

#35961

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Sami Selçuk , is a Turkish jurist, professor of law at the Bilkent University in Ankara. He is also former First President of Court of Cassation of Turkey. He was graduated from Ankara University, Law School in 1959 then he began to work as public prosecutor. On July 7, 1999, he elected the First President of Court of Cassation of Turkey. He retired this job on June 15, 2002. He knows French and Italian languages.

#35950

Patricia Shehan Campbell

#35962

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Patricia Shehan Campbell is an American musicologist. Life and career She is the Donald E. Peterson Professor of Music at the University of Washington, where she teaches courses at the interface of music education and ethnomusicology. Prior to this position, she was a member of the faculties of Washington University in St. Louis and Butler University. Her training includes Dalcroze Eurhythmics, piano and vocal performance, and specialized study in Bulgarian choral song, Indian vocal repertoire, and Thai mahori, the latter two of which were launched during the period of her PhD studies in Music Education at Kent State University.

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