Search People Result | Academic Influence

Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines

Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.

Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.

We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.

To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).

Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …

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List of the most influential people

#40351

Andruw Jones

#40364

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (49 years)

Andruw Rudolf Jones is a Curaçaoan former professional baseball center fielder who played 17 seasons in Major League Baseball , most notably for the Atlanta Braves. Jones also played for the Los Angeles Dodgers, Texas Rangers, Chicago White Sox, and New York Yankees, and in Nippon Professional Baseball for the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles. Jones was a noted defensive specialist for most of his career and won the Rawlings Gold Glove Award for outfielders every year from 1998 through 2007. He had a strong throwing arm in addition to his elite fielding. He was an MLB All-Star five times, and he...

#40352

Rodolfo Enrique Fogwill

Rodolfo Enrique Fogwill

#40365

Overall Influence

1941 - 2010 (69 years)

Rodolfo Enrique Fogwill , who normally went only by his surname, Fogwill, was an Argentine short story writer, novelist, and businessman. He was a distant relative of the novelist Charles Langbridge Morgan. He was the author of Malvinas Requiem, one of the first narratives to deal with the Falklands War. Fogwill died on August 21, 2010, from a pulmonary dysfunction.

#40353

Egon Zakrajšek

#40366

Overall Influence

1941 - 2002 (61 years)

Egon Zakrajšek was a Slovene mathematician and computer scientist. Zakrajšek was born in Ljubljana, SFR Yugoslavia . He became an orphan even before he started school. He went to elementary school and gymnasium in Jesenice. He was a good student and he soon showed his talents and abilities. He graduated from technical mathematics at the Department of mathematics and physics of the then Faculty for natural sciences and technology of the University of Ljubljana. He received his Master's degree from the University of Zagreb for his work Numerična realizacija Ritzovega procesa and his doctorate...

#40354

José Balmes

#40367

Overall Influence

1927 - 2016 (89 years)

José Balmes Parramón was a Spanish-born painter based in Chile. He received Chile's National Prize for Plastic Arts in 1999. Biography José Balmes was born in 1927 in the town of Montesquiu in Catalonia, where he spent his childhood until the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936. Three years later, after the Nationalist victory, Balmes with his family was forced to leave Spain due to the militancy of his father, Damià Balmes, who was mayor of the town for the Republican Left of Catalonia.

#40355

Stephen Mumford

#40368

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Stephen Dean Mumford is a British philosopher, who is currently Head of Department and Professor of Metaphysics in the Department of Philosophy at Durham University. Mumford is best known for his work in metaphysics on dispositions and laws, but has also made contributions in the philosophy of sport.

#40356

Ahmed Tewfik

#40369

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Ahmed H. Tewfik is an Egyptian-American electrical engineer, professor and college administrator who currently serves as the IEEE Signal Processing Society President. He also holds the Cockrell Family Chair in Engineering #1 at UT Austin. He served as the former chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Cockrell School of Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin from 2010 to 2019. For his research and contributions to the field of Signal Processing he was elected as an IEEE Fellow in 1996, received the IEEE Third Millennium Award in 2000, and awarded the 20...

#40357

Keith Miller

#40370

Overall Influence

1919 - 2004 (85 years)

Keith Ross Miller was an Australian Test cricketer and a Royal Australian Air Force pilot during World War II. Miller is widely regarded as Australia's greatest ever all-rounder. His ability, irreverent manner and good looks made him a crowd favourite. English journalist Ian Wooldridge called Miller "the golden boy" of cricket, leading to his being nicknamed "Nugget".

#40358

Lorenzo Ramero

#40371

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Lorenzo Ramero is an Italian mathematician living in France, specialized in algebraic and arithmetic geometry. He is currently a professor of mathematics at the University of Lille. Ramero obtained his Laurea in Matematica from the University of Pisa and his Diploma from the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa in 1989. He completed his Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1994 under the supervision of Alexander Beilinson, with a thesis titled -adic Fourier transform over local fields.

#40359

Milorad Dodik

#40372

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Milorad Dodik is a Bosnian Serb politician serving as the 8th president of Republika Srpska since 2022. Previously, he served as the 7th Serb member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina from 2018 to 2022.

#40360

Margaret Buckingham

#40373

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Margaret Buckingham, is a British developmental biologist working in the fields of myogenesis and cardiogenesis. She is an honorary professor at the Pasteur Institute in Paris and emeritus director in the Centre national de la recherche scientifique . She is a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization, the Academia Europaea and the French Academy of Sciences.

#40361

Leon Goldman

#40374

Overall Influence

1906 - 1997 (91 years)

Leon Goldman was an American dermatologist and a pioneer in laser medicine. His research areas included the application of lasers in dermatology, cancer photodynamic therapy and the use of organic dyes in PDT.

#40362

Tom Skerritt

#40375

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (93 years)

Thomas Roy Skerritt is an American actor who has appeared in over 40 films and more than 200 television episodes since 1962. He is known for his film roles in M*A*S*H, Alien, The Dead Zone, Top Gun, A River Runs Through It, Poltergeist III, and Up in Smoke, and the television series Picket Fences and Cheers. Skerritt has earned several nominations and awards, including winning the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series in 1993 for Picket Fences.

#40363

R. Murray Schafer

#40376

Overall Influence

1933 - 2021 (88 years)

Raymond Murray Schafer was a Canadian composer, writer, music educator, and environmentalist perhaps best known for his World Soundscape Project, concern for acoustic ecology, and his book The Tuning of the World . He was the first recipient of the Jules Léger Prize in 1978.

#40364

Alfredo Jocelyn-Holt

Alfredo Jocelyn-Holt

#40377

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Alfredo Jocelyn-Holt Letelier is a Chilean writer and historian who gained notoriety by his study of the Chilean elite aristocracy and plutocracy and his criticism of traditional state-centered historiography. Jocelyn-Holt has also written several controversial columns, among them one in The Clinic in 2005 where he harshly criticized then presidential candidate Michelle Bachelet.

#40365

Thomas David Gordon

#40378

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Thomas David Gordon is a professor, media ecologist, author, pastor, and Reformed Christian theologian. Thomas David Gordon was born in Richmond, Virginia in 1954. Gordon received a B.L.A. from Roanoke College, a M.A.R. and Th.M. from Westminster Theological Seminary, and Ph. D. from Union Theological Seminary in Virginia where he wrote a dissertation titled Paul's Understanding of the Law: A Tri-polar Analysis . Gordon served as Professor of New Testament and Greek at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts from 1984 to 1998, and professor of Greek and Religious Studies at Grove City College in Pennsylvania from 1999 to the present.

#40366

David Getches

#40379

Overall Influence

1942 - 2011 (69 years)

David Harding Getches was dean and Raphael J. Moses Professor of Natural Resources Law at the University of Colorado Law School in Boulder, Colorado. He taught and wrote on water law, public land law, environmental law, and Indian law.

#40367

Robert Schlögl

#40380

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Robert Schlögl is a German chemist known for research in catalysis. Currently, he is the Director and Scientific Member of the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society in Berlin and the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion in Mülheim an der Ruhr. He became president of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in 2023.

#40368

Bernard Jackson

#40381

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Bernard Stuart Jackson is a former law professor at Liverpool Polytechnic, the University of Kent , and the University of Liverpool . From 1997-2009 he was Alliance Professor of Modern Jewish Studies at the University of Manchester, Co-Director of its Centre for Jewish Studies and Director of its Agunah Research Unit . Latterly, he was Professor of Law and Jewish Studies at Liverpool Hope University . His major academic interests are legal theory, semiotics, and Jewish law.

#40369

Jack Santino

#40382

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Jack Santino is an academic folklorist. His work He is a Professor of Popular Culture at Bowling Green State University and is Director of the Bowling Green Center for Culture Studies. His work has primarily focused on ritual, celebrations, and holidays as well as occupational culture and popular music. He has been a featured expert on a television special produced by The History Channel, about Hallowe'en.

#40370

Igor Dodon

#40383

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Igor Dodon is a Moldovan politician who previously served as the President of Moldova from 23 December 2016 to 24 December 2020. He currently serves as the leader of the Party of Socialists of the Republic of Moldova. He served as minister of trade and economics in the governments of Vasile Tarlev and Zinaida Greceanîi from September 2006 to September 2009 and was a member of the Parliament of Moldova from 2009 to 2016. He lost his bid for re-election in 2020 to Maia Sandu in a rematch whom he had defeated four years earlier in 2016.

#40371

Jos Engelen

#40384

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Prof. dr. Joseph Johannus Engelen , a Dutch physicist, was Chairman of the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research from January 2009 to October 2016. Curriculum Vitae Jos Engelen studied physics at the Radboud University Nijmegen where he obtained an MSc degree in 1973. After graduation he worked at the same university as a researcher and lecturer, and gained also his PhD degree here in 1979. From 1979 to 1985 Engelen worked at CERN, the European research centre for particle physics in Geneva, Switzerland.

#40372

Siegfried Selberherr

Siegfried Selberherr

#40385

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Siegfried Selberherr is an Austrian scientist in the field of microelectronics. He is a professor at the Institute for Microelectronics of the Technische Universität Wien . His primary research interest is in modeling and simulation of physical phenomena in the field of microelectronics.

#40373

Wayne Hsiung

#40386

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (46 years)

Wayne Hsiung is an American attorney and activist. Hsiung is a co-founder of The Simple Heart Initiative and previously led the animal rights network Direct Action Everywhere , which he also co-founded. Hsiung was a lawyer with the law firms DLA Piper and Steptoe & Johnson, a Searle Fellow and visiting assistant professor at the Northwestern University School of Law, and a National Science Foundation-funded graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

#40374

J. William Fulbright

#40387

Overall Influence

1905 - 1995 (90 years)

James William Fulbright was an American politician, academic, and statesman who represented Arkansas in the United States Senate from 1945 until his resignation in 1974. , Fulbright is the longest serving chairman in the history of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. He is best known for his strong multilateralist positions on international issues, opposition to American involvement in the Vietnam War, and the creation of the international fellowship program bearing his name, the Fulbright Program.

#40375

Johnny Pesky

#40388

Overall Influence

1919 - 2012 (93 years)

John Michael Pesky , nicknamed "the Needle" and "Mr. Red Sox", was an American professional baseball player, manager and coach. He was a shortstop and third baseman during a ten-year major league playing career, appearing in 1,270 games played in 1942 and from 1946 to 1954 for three teams. He missed the 1943–45 seasons while serving in World War II. Pesky was associated with the Boston Red Sox for 61 of his 73 years in baseball—from 1940 through June 3, 1952, 1961 through 1964, and from 1969 until his death. Pesky also managed the Red Sox from 1963 to 1964, and in September 1980.

#40376

Guy Halsall

#40389

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Guy Halsall is an English historian and academic, specialising in Early Medieval Europe. He is currently based at the University of York, and has published a number of books, essays, and articles on the subject of early medieval history and archaeology. Halsall's current research focuses on western Europe in the important period of change around AD 600 and on the application of continental philosophy to history. He taught at the University of Newcastle and Birkbeck, University of London, before moving to the University of York.

#40377

Rosandra N. Kaplan

#40390

Overall Influence

Rosandra N. Kaplan is an American pediatric oncologist and scientist specialized in translational and clinical research on the mechanisms of cancer spread. She is a principal investigator and head of the tumor microenvironment and metastasis branch at the National Cancer Institute.

#40378

Howard L. Weiner

Howard L. Weiner

#40391

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Howard L. Weiner is an American neurologist, neuroscientist and immunologist who is also a writer and filmmaker. He performs clinical and basic research focused on multiple sclerosis and other neurologic diseases such as Alzheimer's disease and Lou Gehrig's disease . His work also focuses on autoimmune diseases such as diabetes. Weiner is the Robert L. Kroc Professor of Neurology at Harvard Medical School, director of the Brigham MS Center at the Brigham and Women's Hospital and co-director of the Ann Romney Center for Neurologic Diseases established in 2014, at the Brigham and Women's Hospi...

#40379

Sherman James

#40392

Overall Influence

Sherman A. James is an American epidemiologist. He is currently the Susan B. King Professor Emeritus of Public Policy at Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy, and previously taught at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill from 1973 to 1989 and at the University of Michigan as the John P. Kirscht Collegiate Professor of Public Health from 1989 to 2003. He was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2000.

#40380

Jonathan Beller

#40393

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Jonathan Beller is a film theorist, culture critic and mediologist. He currently holds the position of Professor of Humanities and Media Studies and Critical and Visual Studies, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY. He is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships including Mellon, J.P. Getty and Fulbright Foundation grants and honors.

#40381

Elizabeth Stokoe

Elizabeth Stokoe

#40394

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Elizabeth Stokoe is a British social scientist and conversation analyst. Since January 2023, she has been Professor in the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science at The London School of Economics and Political Science. She was previously Professor of Social Interaction at Loughborough University in the Discourse and Rhetoric Group, where she remains an Honorary Professor. She has been Professor II at University of South-Eastern Norway since 2016.

#40382

James L. Gould

#40395

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

James L. Gould is an American ethologist, evolutionary biologist, and popular science writer. He has served as a professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton University since receiving his PhD in 1975. However, he is primarily known for the experiment he designed while an undergraduate at Caltech which proved that bees use complex dances to communicate the location of food. In addition to several technical works and textbooks, he co-wrote with his wife the popular science book The Honey Bee.

#40383

James E. Boyd

#40396

Overall Influence

1906 - 1998 (92 years)

James Emory Boyd was an American physicist, mathematician, and academic administrator. He was director of the Georgia Tech Research Institute from 1957 to 1961, president of West Georgia College from 1961 to 1971, and acting president of the Georgia Institute of Technology from 1971 to 1972.

#40384

Brian Spooner

#40397

Overall Influence

Brian J. Spooner is a Professor of Anthropology, Undergraduate Chair at Department of Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania and Curator of Near Eastern Ethnology at the Penn Museum. His many works are on subjects including Cultural and social anthropology; globalization, Islam, Middle East, South Asia, Central Asia; social organization, religion, ethnohistory, ecology, non-industrial economies.

#40385

Paul Shattuck

#40398

Overall Influence

Paul T. Shattuck is an autism researcher at the A.J. Drexel Autism Institute at Drexel University, where he leads the Research Program Area on Life Course Outcomes. He was previously a faculty member at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis.

#40386

Gregory Claeys

#40399

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Gregory Claeys is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of London. Career He gained his PhD at the University of Cambridge, where he studied at Jesus College, and was a Junior Research Associate at King's College, working on the "Political Economy and Society" project. From 1982 to 1987 he taught British and American studies at Universität Hannover in Hannover, then West Germany. Then he was Associate Professor of History at Washington University in St. Louis. From 1992 to 2020 he was Professor at Royal Holloway, University of London. His interests are the history of radicalism an...

#40387

Samir Kafity

#40400

Overall Influence

1932 - 2015 (83 years)

Samir Hanna Kaffity was a Palestinian Anglican bishop. Biography He was educated at the American University of Beirut and ordained in 1959. He was parish priest to the Palestinian congregation at St. George's Cathedral, Jerusalem and then held further incumbencies at St Andrew's Ramallah, St Peter's, Bir Zeit, then All Saints, Beirut. From 1977 he was a Lecturer at Birzeit University and then Archdeacon of Jerusalem. In 1982 he became Coadjutor Bishop of Jerusalem and two years later the Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem. Between 1984 and 1997, Kaffity was the second Palestinian Arab bishop. He s...

#40388

Paul Di'Anno

#40401

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Paul Andrews , better known by his stage name Paul Di'Anno, is an English heavy metal singer who was the lead vocalist for Iron Maiden from 1978 to 1981. In his post-Maiden career, Di'Anno has issued numerous albums over the years, as both a solo artist and as a member of such bands as Gogmagog, Di'Anno's Battlezone, Killers, Rockfellas, and more recently, Warhorse. Together with fellow Iron Maiden member Dennis Stratton, he joined Praying Mantis for the recording of their 1990 live album Live at Last.

#40389

Tamás Szőnyi

#40402

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Tamás Szőnyi is a Hungarian mathematician, doing research in discrete mathematics, particularly finite geometry and algebraic coding theory. He is full professor at the department of computer science of the Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, vice director of the Institute of Mathematics, and vice chairman of the mathematical committee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In 2001, he received the Doctor of Science title from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Szőnyi created a successful school in finite geometry. He has done influential work on blocking sets and the polynomial method.

#40390

Susan Rae Wente

#40403

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Susan Wente is an American cell biologist and academic administrator currently serving as the 14th and current President of Wake Forest University. From 2014 to 2021 she was Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at Vanderbilt University. Between August 15, 2019 and June 30, 2020, she served as interim Chancellor at Vanderbilt.

#40391

Michael Kenstowicz

#40404

Overall Influence

Michael John Kenstowicz is an American linguist and professor of linguistics at MIT Department of Linguistics and Philosophy. He is best known for his works on phonetics and phonology. His book Phonology in Generative Grammar is a coursebook taught across the world in phonology courses. He is an editor of Natural Language & Linguistic Theory since 1987.

#40392

Paul Spickard

#40405

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Paul R. Spickard is an American historian and the author of several books on the subject of race and ethnicity, particularly multiracialism. His work was formative in rearticulating and moving beyond a black-white paradigm of race and mixed-race relations in the U.S.

#40393

Juliette Sméralda

#40406

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Juliette Sméralda is a French Afro-descendant sociologist. Publications L'Indo-Antillais entre Noirs et Békés, Éditions L'Harmattan La société martiniquaise entre ethnicité et citoyenneté, Éditions L'Harmattan Du cheveu défrisé au cheveu crépu, Éditions Publibook, Paris, 2012.Peau noire cheveu crépu, l'histoire d'une aliénation, Éditions Jasor La racisation des relations intergroupes ou la problématique de la couleur. Le cas de la Martinique, Éditions L'Harmattan La question de l’immigration indienne dans son environnement socio-économique martiniquais : 1848-1900, Éditions L'Harmattan Guadeloupe Martinique, des sociétés en révolte.

#40394

Milena Minkova

#40407

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Milena Minkova is a Bulgarian scholar of the Latin language. She has lived, studied and taught in Switzerland, Germany and Italy. She is now a resident of the United States and teaches Latin and Classics at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. Since the last decade of the 20th century, she has been one of the leading figures in the revival of the use of Latin among Latin scholars and teachers. She earned two Ph.Ds in Classics and Latin, one from the University of Sofia and the Pontifical Salesian University in Rome .

#40395

Georges Calas

#40408

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Georges Calas is professor of mineralogy at Sorbonne Université and an honorary Senior Member of University Institute of France. Education Calas was educated at the École normale supérieure de Saint-Cloud where he graduated in natural sciences and at Pierre-and-Marie-Curie University where he received his doctorate.

#40396

C. Mauli Agrawal

#40409

Overall Influence

C. Mauli Agrawal is an Indian-American academic, who has been chancellor of the University of Missouri–Kansas City since June 2018. Early life and education Born in Allahabad, India, Agrawal earned a Bachelor's degree of Technology from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. Agrawal then moved to the United States, earning a Master of Science degree in mechanical engineering from Clemson University in 1985, and a PhD in mechanical engineering from Duke University in 1989.

#40397

Pinar Karaca-Mandic

#40410

Overall Influence

Pinar Karaca-Mandic is an American economist who is C. Arthur Williams Jr. Professor in Healthcare Risk Management and Academic Director of the Medical Industry Leadership Institute at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research . She was previously on the faculty of the University of Minnesota School of Public Health and an economist for the RAND Corporation.

#40398

Joel Black

#40411

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Joel Black is a Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia. Black has written extensively on subfields of literature and film studies areas such as romanticism, postmodernism, philosophy and history of science, and cultural studies. He is the author of The Aesthetics of Murder: A Study in Romantic Literature and Contemporary Culture and The Reality Effect: Film Culture and the Graphic Imperative .

#40399

Julieta Castellanos

#40412

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

Julieta Castellanos is a Honduran sociologist and the dean of the National Autonomous University of Honduras since 2009. Castellanos is known for campaigning against violence in Honduras, focusing on both drug cartels and police corruption. She has advocated for both judicial and police reform. Castellanos founded the Observatorio de la Violencia at UNAH in 2004, a center that analyzes crime statistics in Honduras. She was also a member of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was tasked with clarifying the facts related to the 2009 coup that ousted President Manuel Zelaya.

#40400

Mimi Rogers

#40413

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Miriam Rogers is an American actress. Her notable film roles are Gung Ho , Someone to Watch Over Me , Desperate Hours , and Full Body Massage . She garnered the greatest acclaim of her career for her role in the religious drama The Rapture , with critic Robin Wood declaring that she "gave one of the greatest performances in the history of the Hollywood cinema." Rogers has since appeared in Reflections on a Crime , The Mirror Has Two Faces , Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery , Lost in Space , Ginger Snaps , The Door in the Floor , and For a Good Time, Call... .

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