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 …

See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.

Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people

#38001

William Hansen

#38013

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

William Hansen is an American academic who is a professor emeritus of classical studies and folklore at Indiana University Bloomington. Education and career Hansen earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1965 and his PhD in 1970 from the University of California, Berkeley in classical studies.

#38002

Robert V. Hogg

#38014

Overall Influence

1924 - 2014 (90 years)

Robert Vincent Hogg was an American statistician and professor of statistics of the University of Iowa. Hogg is known for his widely used textbooks on statistics and on mathematical statistics . Hogg has received recognition for his research on robust and adaptive nonparametric statistics and for his scholarship on total quality management and statistics education.

#38003

Marc Buie

#38015

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Marc William Buie is an American astronomer and prolific discoverer of minor planets who works at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado in the Space Science Department. Formerly he worked at the Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, and was the Sentinel Space Telescope Mission Scientist for the B612 Foundation, which is dedicated to protecting Earth from asteroid impact events.

#38004

Laszlo B. Kish

#38016

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Laszlo Bela Kish is a physicist and professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University. His activities include a wide range of issues surrounding the physics and technical applications of stochastic fluctuations in physical, biological and technological systems, including nanotechnology. His earlier long-term positions include the Department of Experimental Physics, University of Szeged, Hungary , and Angstrom Laboratory, Uppsala University, Sweden . During the same periods he had also conducted scientific research in short-term positions, such as at the Eindhoven Uni...

#38005

Gilbert E. Metcalf

#38017

Overall Influence

Gilbert E. Metcalf is the John DiBiaggio Professor of Citizenship and Public Service, emeritus, at Tufts University, where he was a professor of economics. Currently, he is a visiting professor at the MIT Sloan School as well as a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a University Fellow at Resources For The Future. Under the Obama Administration, he served as the deputy assistant secretary for environment and energy at the U.S. Department of Treasury where he was the founding U.S. Board Member for the UN based Green Climate Fund. His research interests are in th...

#38006

David Ruffin

#38018

Overall Influence

1941 - 1991 (50 years)

David Ruffin was an American soul singer and musician most famous for his work as one of the lead singers of the Temptations during the group's "Classic Five" period as it was later known. Ruffin was the lead voice on such famous songs as "My Girl" and "Ain't Too Proud to Beg."

#38007

Taye Diggs

#38019

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Scott Leo "Taye" Diggs is an American actor. He is known for his roles in the Broadway musicals Rent and Hedwig and the Angry Inch, the TV series Private Practice , Murder in the First , and All American , and the films How Stella Got Her Groove Back , Brown Sugar, Chicago , Malibu's Most Wanted , Dylan Dog: Dead of Night , and The Best Man and its sequel, The Best Man Holiday .

#38008

Rebecca Gould

#38020

Overall Influence

Rebecca Ruth Gould is a writer, translator, and Distinguished Professor, Comparative Poetics & Global Politics at SOAS University of London. Her interests range across the Caucasus, Comparative Literature, Islam, Islamic Law, Islamic Studies, Persian literature, poetry, and poetics. Her PhD dissertation focused on Persian prison poetry, and was published in revised form as The Persian Prison Poem: Sovereignty and the Political Imagination . Her articles and translations have received awards from English PEN, the International Society for Intellectual History’s Charles Schmitt Prize, the Mode...

#38009

Gary Walker

#38021

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Gary Walker is an American musician, who was the drummer and vocalist with both the Standells and the Walker Brothers. Career The Standells Born Gary Leeds, his professional career started in 1962 when he was recruited to join The Standells. He toured with the group from 1962 to 1964. For a period of time in 1964, he toured with P. J. Proby.

#38010

Ruth Aaronson Bari

#38022

Overall Influence

1917 - 2005 (88 years)

Ruth Aaronson Bari was an American mathematician known for her work in graph theory and algebraic homomorphisms. She was a professor at George Washington University, beginning in 1966. Career The daughter of Polish-Jewish immigrants to the United States, Ruth Aaronson was born November 17, 1917, and grew up in Brooklyn, New York.

#38011

Paisley Currah

#38023

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Paisley Currah is political scientist and author, known for his work on the transgender rights movement. His book, Sex Is as Sex Does: Governing Transgender Identity examines the politics of sex classification in the United States. He is a professor of political science and women's and gender studies at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He was born in Ontario, Canada, received a B.A. from Queen's University at Kingston, Ontario and an M.A and Ph.D. in Government from Cornell University. He lives in Brooklyn.

#38012

John Hudson Bowlby

#38024

Overall Influence

#38013

John Guare

#38025

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

John Guare is an American playwright and screenwriter. He is best known as the author of The House of Blue Leaves and Six Degrees of Separation. Early life He was raised in Jackson Heights, Queens. In 1949, his father suffered a heart attack and subsequently moved the family to Ellenville, New York while he recovered. His father's relatives lived there, making it an idyllic experience for him. Guare did not regularly attend school in Ellenville because the school's daily practices were not in keeping with the recommendations of the Catholic Church, causing his father to suspect the school had communist leanings.

#38014

Alastair Cook

#38026

Overall Influence

1984 - Present (42 years)

Sir Alastair Nathan Cook is an English former cricketer and former captain of the England Test and One-Day International teams. He is considered one of the greatest opening batsmen in test cricket. Cook is the fifth-highest Test run scorer of all time and leading run scorer for England ever. He retired from Test cricket in September 2018 and played for Essex County Cricket Club in English domestic cricket until 2023, while also working for the BBC radio programme Test Match Special, between his commitments for Essex.

#38015

Thomas Wieser

#38027

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Thomas Wieser is an American-Austrian economist working for the European Union. He was the president of Economic and Financial Committee of the EU as well as the president of the Eurogroup Working Group , both advisory bodies of the Eurogroup, until February 2018.

#38016

Dick LeBeau

#38028

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Charles Richard LeBeau is a former American football cornerback and coach in the National Football League . He was active at field level in the NFL for 59 consecutive seasons, 14 playing with the Detroit Lions and 45 as a coach. LeBeau spent the majority of his coaching career as a defensive assistant, most notably as the defensive coordinator of the Cincinnati Bengals and Pittsburgh Steelers. Described as an "innovator" and "defensive football genius", he is considered to be one of the greatest defensive coordinators of all time.

#38017

Gervase Phinn

#38029

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Gervase Phinn is an English author and educator. After a career as a teacher he became a schools inspector and, latterly, Visiting Professor of Education at the University of Teesside. He graduated from Leeds Trinity University in 1970 with a degree in Education.

#38018

Carmine Appice

#38030

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Carmine Appice is an American rock drummer. He is best known for his associations with Vanilla Fudge; Cactus; the power trio Beck, Bogert & Appice; Rod Stewart; King Kobra; and Blue Murder. He is also Vinny Appice's older brother. Appice was inducted into the Classic Drummer Hall of Fame in 2013 and the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 2014.

#38019

Charles Milton Strother

#38031

Overall Influence

Charles M. Strother is Emeritus Professor of Radiology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He was born in McKinney, Texas. He earned his M.D. at the University of Texas Medical Branch. Dr. Strother completed his residencies and fellowships in Neurology, Diagnostic Radiology, and Neuroradiology at Stanford University Medical Center and UCSF School of Medicine. Since then, his work has resulted in over 200 scientific publications. He is past president of the American Society of Neuroradiology . He has trained dozens of radiologists, neurologists, and neurosurgeons in diagnostic and interv...

#38020

Tanya Tucker

#38032

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Tanya Denise Tucker is an American country music singer and songwriter who had her first hit, "Delta Dawn", in 1972 at the age of 13. During her career Tucker became one of the few child performers to mature into adulthood without losing her audience; she had a streak of top-10 and top-40 hits. She has had several successful albums, several Country Music Association award nominations, and hit songs including 1973's "What's Your Mama's Name?" and "Blood Red and Goin' Down", 1975's "Lizzie and the Rainman", 1988's "Strong Enough to Bend", and 1992's "Two Sparrows in a Hurricane". Tucker's 2019 ...

#38021

James A. Baker

#38033

Overall Influence

James Andrew Baker is a former American government official at the Department of Justice who served as general counsel for the Federal Bureau of Investigation and later served as deputy general counsel at Twitter, Inc. before being fired by Elon Musk in December 2022.

#38022

Melania Alvarez

#38034

Overall Influence

Melania Alvarez de Adem is a Mexican mathematics educator who works as the Education Coordinator at the Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences , and Outreach Coordinator for the Department of Mathematics at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

#38023

Philip Boroughs

#38035

Overall Influence

Philip L. Boroughs, S.J., is an American Jesuit, academic and university administrator. Boroughs was unanimously selected as the incoming 32nd President of the College of the Holy Cross on May 6, 2011. He took office on January 9, 2012, when Rev. Michael C. McFarland, S.J., who had served as President of Holy Cross since 2000, stepped down. He served in the role until the end of the 2020-21 academic year, when he was succeeded by Vincent Rougeau.

#38024

Steve Gerber

#38036

Overall Influence

1947 - 2008 (61 years)

Stephen Ross Gerber was an American comic book writer and creator of the satiric Marvel Comics character Howard the Duck. Other works include Man-Thing, Omega the Unknown, Marvel Spotlight: "Son of Satan", The Defenders, Marvel Presents: "Guardians of the Galaxy", Daredevil and Foolkiller. Gerber often included lengthy text pages in the midst of comic book stories, such as in his graphic novel, Stewart the Rat. Gerber was posthumously inducted into the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 2010.

#38025

William Greene

#38037

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

William H. Greene is an American economist. He was formerly the Robert Stansky Professor of Economics and Statistics at Stern School of Business at New York University. Greene is currently a Visiting Professor of Economics at the University of South Florida.

#38026

Francis Schüssler Fiorenza

#38038

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Francis Schüssler Fiorenza is an American theologian who currently holds the post of Charles Chancey Stillman Research Professor of Roman Catholic Theological Studies at Harvard Divinity School. Biography Born Francis Fiorenza in 1941, as a young man he entered St. Mary's Seminary and University in Baltimore, Maryland, from which he earned the degree of Master of Divinity, even though he did not intend to pursue ordination. In 1963 he won a fellowship to study theology in Germany under the Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner at the University of Munich. Because that university would not accept docto...

#38027

John Krueger

#38039

Overall Influence

1927 - 2018 (91 years)

John Richard Krueger was a professor at Indiana University, specialized in studies of Chuvash and Yakut, and Mongolian languages. His approximately 20 books are the standard works, each held in about one hundred United States research libraries. One of his most important contributions is that he translated numerous non-English sources and books into English, such as György Kara's Books of the Mongolian nomads : more than eight centuries of writing Mongolian.

#38028

Anna Akhmanova

#38040

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Anna Sergeevna Akhmanova is a Russian-born professor of Cell Biology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. She is best known for her research regarding microtubules and the proteins, called TIPs, that stabilize one specific end of the tubules. Among the awards she has won, she was one of the recipients of the 2018 Spinoza Prize, the highest honor for Dutch scientists.

#38029

R. Scott Clark

#38041

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Robert Scott Clark is an American Reformed pastor and seminary professor. He is the author of several books, including his most recent work, Recovering the Reformed Confession. Biography Clark earned a B.A. from the University of Nebraska, Master of Divinity from Westminster Seminary California, and D.Phil. from the University of Oxford. Since 1997 he has been teaching at Westminster Seminary California, where he served as academic dean from 1997 to 2001; currently he is professor of church history and historical theology. He has also taught at Wheaton College , Reformed Theological Seminary, Jackson, and Concordia University, Irvine.

#38030

Kiyoto Ota

#38042

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Kiyoto Ota is a Japanese-Mexican sculptor. Life Kiyoto Ota studied atthe School of Democratic Art of the Japanese Artistic Association in Tokyo the Escuela Nacional de Pintura, Escultura y Grabado "La Esmeralda" of the INBA the Centro de Investigación y Experimentación Plástica of the INBA .Ota moved to Mexico in 1972, currently living in Mexico City. He came to the country to study art and learn about Mexico and decided to stay.

#38031

Ananya Roy

#38043

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Ananya Roy is a scholar of international development and global urbanism. Born in Calcutta, India , Roy is Professor and Meyer and Renee Luskin Chair in Inequality and Democracy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. She has been a professor of City and Regional Planning and Distinguished Chair in Global Poverty and Practice at the University of California, Berkeley. She holds a Bachelor of Comparative Urban Studies degree from Mills College, and Master of City Planning and Doctor of Philosophy degrees from the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of California a...

#38032

Christine K. Cassel

#38044

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Christine K. Cassel is a leading expert in geriatric medicine, medical ethics and quality of care. She is planning dean of the new Kaiser Permanente School of Medicine. Until March 2016, she was president and CEO of the National Quality Forum. Previously, Cassel served as president and CEO of the American Board of Internal Medicine and the ABIM Foundation.

#38033

Lars Hernquist

#38045

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Lars Hernquist is a theoretical astrophysicist and Mallinckrodt Professor of Astrophysics at the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian. He is best known for his research on dynamical processes in cosmology and galaxy formation/galaxy evolution.

#38034

Hans Heinrich Schmid

#38046

Overall Influence

1937 - 2014 (77 years)

Hans Heinrich Schmid was a Swiss Protestant Reformed theologian, University Professor and University Rector. Life He was the son of the Zurich pastor Gotthard Schmid . He studied theology at the Universities of Zurich and Göttingen and received his doctorate in 1965 in Zurich.

#38035

Toots Thielemans

#38047

Overall Influence

1922 - 2016 (94 years)

Jean-Baptiste Frédéric Isidor, Baron Thielemans , known professionally as Toots Thielemans , was a Belgian jazz musician. He was mostly known for playing the chromatic harmonica, as well as his guitar and whistling skills, and composing. According to jazz historian Ted Gioia, his most important contribution was in "championing the humble harmonica", which Thielemans made into a "legitimate voice in jazz". He eventually became the "preeminent" jazz harmonica player.

#38036

Hanns Malissa

#38048

Overall Influence

1920 - 2010 (90 years)

Hanns Malissa was an Austrian analytical chemist and environmental chemist who published about 250 scientific papers and several books. Academic career Malissa completed high school in his home town Bruck an der Mur in March 1939, and studied chemistry first at the Prague University of Technology but earned his doctorate at the Graz University of Technology in December 1943. Subsequently he became an assistant at the institutes for food chemistry and geochemistry. From July 1948 to February 1949 he was a guest scientist at Uppsala University. From 1953-1959 he worked at the Max Planck Institu...

#38037

Muthucumaraswamy Sornarajah

#38049

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Muthucumaraswamy Sornarajah is a legal academic. He is an Emeritus Professor and former C. J. Koh Professor of Law at the National University of Singapore, the Tunku Abdul Rahman Professor of Law at the University of Malaya, and the former head of the school of law at the University of Tasmania. He is also a Visiting Professor at the Centre for Human Rights, London School of Economics. He has been arbitrator, counsel or expert in several leading investment arbitrations.

#38038

Louis Auslander

#38050

Overall Influence

1928 - 1997 (69 years)

Louis Auslander was a Jewish American mathematician. He had wide-ranging interests both in pure and applied mathematics and worked on Finsler geometry, geometry of solvmanifolds and nilmanifolds, locally affine spaces, many aspects of harmonic analysis, representation theory of solvable Lie groups, and multidimensional Fourier transforms and the design of signal sets for communications and radar. He is the author of more than one hundred papers and ten books.

#38039

Wallace Shawn

#38051

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Wallace Michael Shawn is an American actor, playwright, essayist, and screenwriter. He is known for playing Vizzini in The Princess Bride , Mr. Hall in Clueless , and Rex in the Toy Story franchise .

#38040

Waldemar Łysiak

Waldemar Łysiak

#38052

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Waldemar Łysiak is a bestselling Polish writer, art historian and journalist, who has written under his own name as well as the pseudonyms 'Valdemar Baldhead' , 'Archibald', 'Mark W. Kingden', 'Rezerwowy Ł.'. He is notable as an author of numerous books on the Napoleonic era, both historical and fiction. He also owns a large number of rare prints and manuscripts, among others the poems by Norwid and the only surviving copy of Kochanowski's Treny.

#38041

Antonio Margarito

Antonio Margarito

#38053

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (48 years)

Antonio Margarito Montiel is a Mexican-American former professional boxer who competed between 1994 and 2017. He held multiple welterweight world championships, including the WBO title from 2002 to 2007, the IBF title in 2008, and the WBA title from 2008 to 2009. He also challenged three times for a light middleweight world title between 2004 and 2011. Nicknamed El Tornado de Tijuana , Margarito was known for his aggressive pressure fighting style and exceptionally durable chin.

#38042

Paul Auerbach

#38054

Overall Influence

1951 - 2021 (70 years)

Paul Stuart Auerbach was an American physician and author in the academic discipline of wilderness medicine. He was the founder and past president of the Wilderness Medical Society. Auerbach was the editor for the Journal of Wilderness Medicine published by the Wilderness Medical Society from 1990 to 1995. Auerbach was also the author of a number of articles and books on topics such as emergency medicine, hazardous marine animals, and scuba diving, including two books of underwater photography.

#38043

P. R. Pisharoty

P. R. Pisharoty

#38055

Overall Influence

1909 - 2002 (93 years)

Pisharoth Rama Pisharoty was an Indian physicist and meteorologist, and is considered to be the father of remote sensing in India. Early life and education P. R. Pisharoty was born on 10 February 1909 in the town of Kollengode in the Indian state of Kerala. His parents were Sivaramakrishnan alias Gopala Vadhyar and Lakshmi Pisharassiar. He had three brothers: Chakrapani, Balakrishnan and Rajagopal, and three half brothers: Vaidyanathan, Rose Vadhyar and Gopalakrishnan. He completed his early education in Kerala. Having done his Physics BA honours from St. Joseph's College, Trichinopoly, Madras state, he went on to do his MA from Madras University.

#38044

Georgie Fame

#38056

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Georgie Fame is an English R&B and jazz musician. Fame, who had a string of 1960s hits, is still performing, often working with contemporaries such as Alan Price, Van Morrison and Bill Wyman. Fame is the only British music act to have achieved three UK No. 1 hits with his only top 10 chart entries: "Yeh, Yeh" in 1964, "Get Away" in 1966 and "The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde" in 1967.

#38045

Geoffrey W. Bromiley

#38057

Overall Influence

1915 - 2009 (94 years)

Geoffrey William Bromiley was an ecclesiastical historian and historical theologian. He was professor emeritus at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, having been Professor of Church History and Historical Theology there from 1958 until his retirement in 1987.

#38046

Moya Bowler

#38058

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Moya Bowler is an English shoe designer who rose to prominence in the 1960s. She had considerable success in both the UK and US fashion markets, designing both high-end and high-street shoes. A graduate of the Royal College of Art, she was among a crop of designers subsequently described by fashion writer and editor Brenda Polan as the "annus mirabilis", since so many of them went on to carve highly successful careers in fashion. Although she was among the stars of the 1960s avant-garde boutique scene, Bowler was also highly commercial – producing designs for high-street chains such as Lilley & Skinner while she was still a student.

#38047

Elisa Bertino

#38059

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Elisa Bertino is a professor of computer science at Purdue University and is acting as the research director of CERIAS, the Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security, an institute attached to Purdue University. Bertino's research interest include data privacy and computer security.

#38048

Faruk Čaklovica

#38060

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Faruk Čaklovica is a Bosnian Professor of Bromatology and former Rector of the University of Sarajevo. He is member of the board at the Balkan Universities Network 2010. Biography Čaklovica received his BSci in veterinary medicine from the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at the Sarajevo University in 1977, his MSci and Doctorate from the same Faculty in 1983 and 1987.

#38049

Sahak II Mashalian

#38061

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Archbishop Sahag II Mashalian , also known as Sahak Mashalyan in Eastern Armenian transliteration became the 85th Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople in 2019. The Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople is one of the four Sees of Armenian Apostolic Church and has an autocephalous status, accepting, on the other hand, spiritual supremacy of the Catholicos of Armenia and of all Armenians in Holy Echmiadzin.

#38050

Patrick D. Miller

#38062

Overall Influence

1935 - 2020 (85 years)

Patrick D. Miller, Jr. was an American Old Testament scholar who served as Charles T. Haley Professor of Old Testament Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary from 1984 to 2005. He was an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church .

« Previous Next »

Image Attributions