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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List of the most influential people

#37101

Gregg Henriques

#37113

Overall Influence

Gregg Henriques is an American psychologist. He is a professor for the Combined-Integrated Doctoral Program, at James Madison University, in Harrisonburg, Virginia, US. He developed the Unified Theory Of Knowledge , which consists of eight key ideas that Henriques claims results in a much more unified vision of science, psychology and philosophy.

#37102

Agnes Callard

#37114

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (50 years)

Agnes Callard is an American philosopher and an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago. Her primary areas of specialization are ancient philosophy and ethics. She is also noted for her popular writings and work on public philosophy.

#37103

Tanika Sarkar

#37115

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Tanika Sarkar is a historian of modern India based at the Jawaharlal Nehru University. Sarkar's work focuses on the intersections of religion, gender, and politics in both colonial and postcolonial South Asia, in particular on women and the Hindu Right.

#37104

Mārcis Auziņš

#37116

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Mārcis Auziņš is a Latvian physicist. From 2007 to 2015 he served as the rector of the University of Latvia. In 1998, Auziņš was also elected a member of the Latvian Academy of Sciences. In 2005 he was a visiting Miller professor at University of California, Berkeley

#37105

Wynonna Judd

#37117

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Wynonna Ellen Judd, known simply as Wynonna , is an American country music singer. She is one of the most widely recognized and awarded female country musicians in history. In all, she has had 19 No. 1 singles, including those with The Judds. Her solo albums and singles are all credited to—and performed under—the singular stage name, Wynonna. She first rose to fame in the 1980s alongside her mother, Naomi, in their mother-daughter country music duo, The Judds. They released seven albums on Curb Records, in addition to 26 singles, of which 14 were No. 1 hits. In 2023 Wynonna was named the best ...

#37106

Micheál Martin

#37118

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Micheál Martin is an Irish Fianna Fáil politician who is serving as Tánaiste, Minister for Foreign Affairs, and Minister for Defence since December 2022. He served as Taoiseach from 2020 to 2022 and has been Leader of Fianna Fáil since January 2011. He has been a Teachta Dála for Cork South-Central since 1989. He served as Leader of the Opposition from 2011 to 2020 and held various Cabinet offices under Bertie Ahern and Brian Cowen.

#37107

Venkatesh Shankar

Venkatesh Shankar

#37119

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Venkatesh Shankar is an American marketing professor, consultant and author. He is currently Professor of Marketing, Ford Chair in Marketing & E-Commerce at Mays Business School, Texas A&M University. He is the co-editor of the Handbook of Marketing Strategy and the author of Shopper Marketing.

#37108

Pat Kirkham

#37120

Overall Influence

Pat Kirkham is an author, professor, and design historian. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of London and is considered a foremost expert on the history of design, film, gender, and class. She is perhaps best known as the author of the first major book about designer Saul Bass, the monograph Saul Bass: A Life in Film and Design.

#37109

Pratibha Gai

#37121

Overall Influence

Dame Pratibha Laxman Gai-Boyes is a British microscopist and Professor and Chair of Electron Microscopy and former Director at The York JEOL Nanocentre, Departments of Chemistry and Physics, University of York. She created the atomic-resolution environmental transmission electron microscope and is an outspoken advocate for women with careers in science.

#37110

Charles B. Dew

#37122

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Charles Burgess Dew is an American author and historian, specializing in the history of the Southern United States, American Civil War and the Reconstruction era, and holds the Ephraim Williams Professorship of American History at Williams College. His first of three published books was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.

#37111

Dimitris Metaxas

#37123

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Dimitris Metaxas is a distinguished professor and the chair of the Computer Science Department at Rutgers University, where he directs the Center for Computational Biomedicine Imaging and Modeling . Education Metaxas was educated at the University of Toronto where he was awarded a PhD degree in 1992 under the supervision of Demetri Terzopoulos as part of the Dynamic Graphics Project. He was awarded an M.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Maryland, College Park in 1988. He did his undergraduate studies in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the National Technical University of A...

#37112

David L. Paulsen

#37124

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (90 years)

David Lamont Paulsen was a professor emeritus of philosophy at Brigham Young University . From 1994 to 1998 he held the Richard L. Evans Chair of Religious Understanding at BYU. He was an active faculty member at BYU from 1972–2011.

#37113

Jean Golding

#37125

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (87 years)

Jean Golding , FMedSci, is a British epidemiologist, and founder of the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children , also known as "Children of the Nineties". She is Emeritus Professor of Paediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology at the University of Bristol.

#37114

Lewis Sorley

#37126

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (92 years)

Lewis Stone "Bob" Sorley III is an American intelligence analyst and military historian. His books about the U.S. war in Vietnam, in which he served as an officer, have been highly influential in government circles.

#37115

Jack Ham

#37127

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Jack Raphael Ham Jr. is an American former professional football player who was a linebacker for the Pittsburgh Steelers of the National Football League from 1971 to 1982. He is considered one of the greatest outside linebackers in the history of the NFL. Ham was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1988 and the College Football Hall of Fame in 1990. He played college football for the Penn State Nittany Lions. In mid-2019 the newsletter of the PSU Alumni Association rated Ham first among the 100 greatest athletes, considering all sports and all previous football players, in Univers...

#37116

Anna Leander

#37128

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Anna Leander is a sociologist and political scientist. Leander is currently a professor at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. She previously taught at the Copenhagen Business School and the Inst. de Relacoes Internacionais, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. Leander is well known for her work in critical security studies and international political sociology. Theoretically, Leander has played an important role in bringing the work of Pierre Bourdieu into conversation with the discipline of International Relations, as well as more recently working with materialist and pragmatist sociologies.

#37117

Scott Jensen

#37129

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Scott M. Jensen is an American physician and politician. A member of the Republican Party, he was a member of the Minnesota Senate from 2017 to 2021. He was the Republican nominee for governor of Minnesota in the 2022 election.

#37118

Alain Prochiantz

#37130

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Alain Prochiantz is a neurobiology researcher and professor at the Collège de France, of which he became director from 2015 to 2019. Biography Alain Prochiantz is a former student of the École normale supérieure . After a science thesis obtained in 1976 in the field of genetic translation, he turned towards neurobiology by working with Jacques Glowinski and became a research fellow and then research director at the CNRS. He was appointed head of the Biology Department at the École normale supérieure, which he kept until 2006, when he became the holder of the "Morphogenetic Processes" chair...

#37119

Jörg Blasius

#37131

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Jörg Blasius is a German sociologist, and Professor at the Institute of Political Science and Sociology of the University of Bonn. He became known through his earlier work on correspondence analysis in the social sciences.

#37120

Étienne Fouvry

#37132

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Étienne Fouvry is a French mathematician working primarily in analytic number theory. In 1985, Fouvry showed that the first case of Fermat's Last Theorem is true for infinitely many primes. External links Videos of Étienne Fouvry in the AV-Portal of the German National Library of Science and Technology

#37121

Gene Clark

#37133

Overall Influence

1944 - 1991 (47 years)

Harold Eugene Clark was an American singer-songwriter and founding member of the folk rock band the Byrds. He was the Byrds' principal songwriter between 1964 and early 1966, writing most of the band's best-known originals from this period, including "I'll Feel a Whole Lot Better", "She Don't Care About Time", "Eight Miles High" and "Set You Free This Time". Although he did not achieve commercial success as a solo artist, Clark was in the vanguard of popular music during much of his career, prefiguring developments in such disparate subgenres as psychedelic rock, baroque pop, newgrass, country rock, and alternative country.

#37122

Pat Haden

#37134

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Patrick Capper Haden is an American former professional football player and college administrator. He was the athletic director at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles from August 2010 to June 2016. He played quarterback for the USC Trojans before playing professionally in the National Football League for the Los Angeles Rams from 1976 through 1981. He also played in the World Football League for the Southern California Sun in 1975.

#37123

Patrick Dempsey

Patrick Dempsey

#37135

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Patrick Galen Dempsey is an American actor and racing driver. He is best known for his role as neurosurgeon Derek "McDreamy" Shepherd in the ABC medical drama series Grey's Anatomy from 2005 to 2015. He is also known for his leading man romantic films roles, including in Enchanted . Dempsey has received nominations for a Primetime Emmy Award and two Golden Globe Awards, and was named as People's Sexiest Man Alive in 2023.

#37124

Matthew Weiner

#37136

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Matthew Hoffman Weiner is an American television writer, producer, and director best known as the creator and showrunner of the television series Mad Men, and as a writer and executive producer on The Sopranos.

#37125

Dan Carter

#37137

Overall Influence

1982 - Present (44 years)

Daniel William Carter is a New Zealand retired rugby union player. Carter played for the Crusaders in New Zealand and for New Zealand's national team, the All Blacks. He is the highest point scorer in test match rugby, and is considered by many experts as the greatest ever first five-eighth in the history of the game. He was named the International Rugby Board Player of the Year in 2005, 2012 and 2015 and has won three Super Rugby titles with the Crusaders, and nine Tri-Nations and Rugby Championships with the All Blacks.

#37126

Amardeo Sarma

#37138

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Amardeo Sarma is a qualified engineer for electrical and telecommunications engineering, chair of the Gesellschaft zur wissenschaftlichen Untersuchung von Parawissenschaften and former chair of the European Council of Skeptical Organisations. Professionally, he works for NEC Laboratories Europe.

#37127

Kay Davies

#37139

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Dame Kay Elizabeth Davies is a British geneticist. She is Dr Lee's Professor of Anatomy at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford. She is director of the Medical Research Council functional genetics unit, a governor of the Wellcome Trust, a director of the Oxford Centre for Gene Function, and a patron and Senior Member of Oxford University Scientific Society. Her research group has an international reputation for work on Duchenne muscular dystrophy . In the 1980s, she developed a test which allowed for the screening of foetuses whose mothers have a high risk of ca...

#37128

Jonathan Dowling

Jonathan Dowling

#37140

Overall Influence

1955 - 2020 (65 years)

Jonathan P. Dowling was an Irish-American researcher and professor in theoretical physics, known for his work on quantum technology, particularly for exploiting quantum entanglement for applications to quantum metrology, quantum sensing, and quantum imaging.

#37129

Ralph Bellamy

#37141

Overall Influence

1904 - 1991 (87 years)

Ralph Rexford Bellamy was an American actor whose career spanned 65 years on stage, film, and television. During his career, he played leading roles as well as supporting roles, garnering acclaim and awards, including a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for Sunrise at Campobello as well as Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor nomination for The Awful Truth .

#37130

James Nesbitt

#37142

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

William James Nesbitt is an actor from Northern Ireland. From 1987, Nesbitt spent seven years performing in plays that varied from the musical Up on the Roof to the political drama Paddywack . He made his feature film debut playing talent agent Fintan O'Donnell in Hear My Song . He got his breakthrough television role playing Adam Williams in the romantic comedy-drama series Cold Feet , which won him a British Comedy Award, a Television and Radio Industries Club Award, and a National Television Award.

#37131

Julie Macpherson

#37143

Overall Influence

Julie Macpherson is a professor of chemistry at the University of Warwick. In 2017 she was awarded the Royal Society Innovation award for her research into boron doped diamond electrochemical sensors.

#37132

Li Jen-kuei

#37144

Overall Influence

1936 - Present (90 years)

Paul Li, or Li Jen-kuei , is a Taiwanese linguist. Li is a research fellow at the Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica in Taipei, Taiwan. Li is a leading specialist on Formosan languages and has published dictionaries on the Pazeh and Kavalan languages.

#37133

Masaaki Kimura

#37145

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Masaaki Kimura is a Japanese geologist and a professor emeritus from the Faculty of Science of the University of the Ryukyus, Okinawa, Japan. Biography Masaaki Kimura graduated in science at the Faculty of Fisheries of the University of Tokyo and obtained a Doctorate in marine geology . He has worked for the University of Tokyo's Ocean Research Institute, the Geological Survey of Japan, the Agency of Industrial Science and Technology of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry of Japan, and Columbia University's Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory. He taught at the University of the Ryukyus from 1977 to 2002.

#37134

Guntram Wolff

#37146

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Guntram Wolff is a political economist and the Director and CEO of the German Council on Foreign Relations DGAP. From 2013 to 2022, he was the Director of Bruegel. He is a honorary professor at the Willy Brandt School of Public Policy at University Erfurt and was a Professor at the Solvay school of Université libre de Bruxelles. Under his leadership, Bruegel became a leading institute for European economic policy and has been ranked the top international think tank outside of the US by the University of Pennsylvania Think tank ranking . His research is focused on European political economy, ...

#37135

Nita A. Farahany

#37147

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (48 years)

Nita Farahany is an Iranian American author and distinguished professor and scholar on the ramifications of new technology on society, law, and ethics. She is the author of the critically acclaimed book, The Battle for Your Brain: Defending the Right to Think Freely in the Age of Neurotechnology. She currently teaches Law and philosophy at Duke University where she is the Robinson O. Everett Distinguished Professor of Law & Philosophy at Duke Law School, the founding director of the Duke Initiative for Science and Society as well as a chair of the Bioethics and Science Policy MA program. She ...

#37136

Charles A. Holt

#37148

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Charles A. Holt is a behavioral economist, the A. Willis Robertson Professor of Political Economy at the University of Virginia. He also teaches public policy at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy. He developed with Susan K. Laury, the main test to measure risk aversion in 2002.

#37137

Matthew Walker

#37149

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Matthew Walker is a British author, scientist and professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. As an academic, Walker has focused on the impact of sleep on human health. He has contributed to many scientific research studies. Why We Sleep is his first work of popular science.

#37138

David M. Levy

#37150

Overall Influence

David Levy is an American computer scientist and professor at University of Washington Information School. He is known for his research, writing, and teaching on the prevention of information overload.

#37139

Godehard Link

#37151

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Godehard Link is a professor of logic and philosophy of science at the University of Munich. External links Godehard Link at Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy

#37140

Dariusz Doliński

#37152

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Dariusz Doliński is a Polish psychologist. He specialises in the psychology of social behaviour, including social influence, emotional psychology, and motivation. He is a lecturer at Szkoła Wyższa Psychologii Społecznej , teaching social psychology and advertising psychology. He is an author of over 150 publications.

#37141

Sergei Yakhontov

Sergei Yakhontov

#37153

Overall Influence

1926 - 2018 (92 years)

Sergey E. Yakhontov was a Russian linguist, an expert in Chinese, comparative, and general linguistics. He was the son of astronomer Nataliya Sergeevna Samoilova-Yakhontova. In 1950 he was graduated from the Oriental Faculty of Leningrad State University. In 1962–1963 he underwent training in Beijing and visited Nanyang University from 1971 to 1972. He taught at the Oriental Faculty of St. Petersburg State University.

#37142

Lise Eliot

#37154

Overall Influence

Lise Eliot is Professor of Neuroscience at the Chicago Medical School at Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science. She is best known for her book, on the gender differences between boys and girls, Pink Brain, Blue Brain: How Small Differences Grow into Troublesome Gaps and What We Can Do About It .

#37143

Giuseppe Caire

#37155

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Giuseppe Caire is an Italian telecommunications engineer. Career Caire received his B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from Politecnico di Torino in 1990, his M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University in 1992, and his Ph.D. from Politecnico di Torino in 1994. He was a post-doctoral research fellow with the European Space Agency from 1994 to 1995. He has been an assistant professor in Telecommunications at the Politecnico di Torino from 1995 to 1997, an associate professor at the University of Parma from 1997 to 1998, and a full professor with the Department of Mobile Communications at the Eurecom Institute from 1998 to 2005.

#37144

Louis-Edmond Hamelin

Louis-Edmond Hamelin

#37156

Overall Influence

1923 - 2020 (97 years)

Louis-Edmond Hamelin, was a Canadian geographer, professor, and author born in Saint-Didace, Quebec, Canada, best known for his studies of Northern Canada. Hamelin created the Centre for Northern Studies at the Université Laval in Québec and was rector of the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières from 1978 to 1983. He was also a member of the Northwest Territories Legislative Council.

#37145

James Anderson

#37157

Overall Influence

James H. Anderson is an American government official and academic who served as acting Under Secretary of Defense for Policy in the Donald Trump administration. Early life and education Anderson earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy from Amherst College. He then earned a Master of Arts in law and a PhD in international affairs from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. His 1993 doctoral thesis was entitled National decisionmaking and quick-strike intervention during the 1980s: a comparative analysis of operations Urgent Fury, El Dorado Canyon, and Just Cause and his thesis advisor was Richard H.

#37146

Michael W. Friedlander

#37158

Overall Influence

1928 - 2021 (93 years)

Michael Wulf Friedlander was a South African-born American physicist and skeptic. Friedlander was professor emeritus of physics at Washington University in St. Louis. His research involved the study of cosmic rays and gamma ray astronomy. He is the author of the book At The Fringes Of Science , a scholarly study of fringe science. The book is notable for its criticism of the ideas of Immanuel Velikovsky.

#37147

Ranginui Walker

#37159

Overall Influence

1932 - 2016 (84 years)

Ranginui Joseph Isaac Walker was an influential New Zealand academic, author, and activist of Māori and Lebanese descent. "I think he was the Māori commentator for a very long period," his biographer, Professor Paul Spoonley, has said. Walker wrote about the struggles for Māori land rights and cultural identity and, says Spoonley, "confront[ed] Pakeha about their lack of understanding and prejudices to Māori" in his books and regular columns for the weekly New Zealand Listener and the monthly Metro magazine throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

#37148

Andrew Metrick

#37160

Overall Influence

Andrew Metrick is an American economist who is the current Janet L. Yellen Professor of Finance and Management at the Yale School of Management. His research has touched on topics including game theory, venture capital and private equity, and most recently on financial stability. He is also the director of the Yale Program on Financial Stability.

#37149

Perry Saturn

#37161

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Perry Arthur Satullo is an American retired professional wrestler known by his ring name, Perry Saturn. Since debuting in 1990, Saturn wrestled for promotions including Extreme Championship Wrestling , World Championship Wrestling , the World Wrestling Federation and Total Nonstop Action Wrestling . He is a former ECW World Tag Team Champion, WCW World Tag Team Champion, WCW World Television Champion, WWF European Champion and WWF Hardcore Champion. He has been recognized by commentators as one of the more relevant stars in WCW and ECW in the late 1990s.

#37150

Gerhard Abstreiter

#37162

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Gerhard Abstreiter is a German physicist and professor of physics at Technical University of Munich , currently holding the university's highest honor, the Emeritus of Excellence and also being a distinguished visiting professor at University of California, Santa Barbara. From 1987 to 2015, he was a full professor at TUM and also, in 2010 and 2011, a distinguished visiting professor at University of Tokyo. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities and acatech.

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