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

#40901

Nick Greiner

#40914

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Nicholas Frank Hugo Greiner is an Australian politician who served as the 37th Premier of New South Wales from 1988 to 1992. Greiner was Leader of the New South Wales Division of the Liberal Party from 1983 to 1992 and Leader of the Opposition from 1983 to 1988. Greiner had served as the Federal President of the Liberal Party of Australia from 2017 to 2020. He is the current Consul-General in the United States of America, New York.

#40902

Lloyd Ultan

#40915

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Lloyd Ultan is a historian and author. A native of The Bronx in New York City, he was the borough's historian from 1996 to 2023. He is a professor of history at Fairleigh Dickinson University's and a member of the adjunct faculty at Lehman College. Ultan received a B.A. in history from Hunter College in 1959 and an M.A. in history from Columbia University in 1960.

#40903

Guenter B. Risse

Guenter B. Risse

#40916

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (94 years)

Guenter B. Risse is an American medical historian. He has written numerous books, including his most recent "Driven by Fear: Epidemics and Isolation in San Francisco's House of Pestilence." The American Association for the History of Medicine awarded him the 1988 William H. Welch Medal for his book Hospital Life in Enlightenment Scotland and its Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005. He is Professor Emeritus, Department of Anthropology, History and Social Medicine, at the University of California, San Francisco, and currently Affiliate Professor of Bioethics and Humanities at the University of W...

#40904

Vasilis Ntziachristos

#40917

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (56 years)

Vasilis Ntziachristos is a Greek American biomedical engineer, scientist, and inventor best known for his development of fundamental and translational research tools for imaging tissues based on fluorescence and optoacoustics.

#40905

Khurshid Rizvi

#40918

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Khurshid Rizvi is a Pakistani scholar of languages and an Urdu poet. Early life Rizvi was born on 8 December 1940 in Amroha, Muradabad in a Sunni Sadaat family. As a young child, he immigrated with his family to Montgomery in 1948 , Punjab . He studied at Islamia High School, and Government High School & finally graduated from Government College, Montgomery in 1959. He moved to the University Oriental College Lahore for higher studies and earned his MA in Arabic in 1961. Later, he got his Ph.D. in Arabic from the same university in 1981.

#40906

Roger Horn

#40919

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

Roger Alan Horn is an American mathematician specializing in matrix analysis. He was research professor of mathematics at the University of Utah. He is known for formulating the Bateman–Horn conjecture with Paul T. Bateman on the density of prime number values generated by systems of polynomials. His books Matrix Analysis and Topics in Matrix Analysis, co-written with Charles R. Johnson, are standard texts in advanced linear algebra.

#40907

Richard Faull

#40920

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (81 years)

Sir Richard Lewis Maxwell Faull is a New Zealand neuroscientist and academic who specialises in human neurodegenerative diseases. He is a professor of anatomy and director of the Centre for Brain Research at the University of Auckland.

#40908

Klaus Kinski

#40921

Overall Influence

1926 - 1991 (65 years)

Klaus Kinski was a German actor, equally renowned for his intense performance style and notorious for his volatile personality. He appeared in over 130 film roles in a career that spanned 40 years, from 1948 to 1988. He played leading parts in five films directed by Werner Herzog , who later chronicled their tumultuous relationship in the documentary My Best Fiend .

#40909

Francis Christopher Oakley

#40922

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (95 years)

Francis Christopher Oakley is the former Edward Dorr Griffin Professor of the History of ideas at Williams College, President Emeritus of Williams College and President Emeritus of the American Council of Learned Societies, New York. He also served as Interim Director of the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute.

#40910

Jan Smit

#40923

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Jan Smit is a Dutch theoretical physicist. During his PhD at UCLA with professor Robert Finkelstein he made some early contributions to lattice formulation of quantum field theory around 1972, which was a year before Kenneth Wilson, and two years before Alexander Polyakov. However, he encountered some problems with fermion doubling which he could not solve at the moment. At that time he did not realize the value of his work and he only mentioned it briefly in his Ph.D. thesis in 1974, which was about Schwinger source theory. A few years later he returned to working on the lattice formulation ...

#40911

Yehudah L. Werner

#40924

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (95 years)

Yehudah Leopold Werner is an Israeli herpetologist and Professor Emeritus at the Alexander Silberman Institute of Life Sciences, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem . He and his parents were forced to flee from Nazi Germany in 1933, and reached Palestine via France and England in 1935. Georg Haas , an emigrant from Austria who was Professor in Jerusalem, guided his PhD at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. During his long scientific career, Werner published more than 400 titles. Among other things, the biology of the geckos, including their vocal communication, as well as the zoogeography and conservation of the reptiles and amphibians in the Middle East are his main themes.

#40912

Prakash Jha

#40925

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

Prakash Jha is an Indian film producer, actor, director and screenwriter, mostly known for his political and socio-political films such as Hip Hip Hurray , Damul , Mrityudand , Gangaajal , Apaharan , and his multi-starrer films, Raajneeti , Aarakshan , Chakravyuh , and Satyagraha . He is also the maker of National Film Award winning documentaries like Faces After The Storm and Sonal .

#40913

Ernest Weinrib

#40926

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Ernest J. Weinrib is a legal academic who works on jurisprudence and legal philosophy, particularly the theory of private law. He teaches at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law. Theories In Weinrib's theories he sees the world of private law as being composed of "bilateral relationships between individuals whereby one person's right is always a function of another person's duty".

#40914

Gerrit Dimmendaal

#40927

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Gerrit Jan Dimmendaal is a Dutch linguist and Africanist. His research interests focused mainly on the Nilo-Saharan languages. He completed his studies in African studies, Arabic studies, history, and comparative literature at Leiden University, and graduating with a doctorate in 1982. He has been Professor of African Studies at University of Cologne since 2000.

#40915

Shmuel Trigano

#40928

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Shmuel Trigano is a sociologist, philosopher, professor emeritus of sociology at Paris Nanterre University . He was Tikvah Fund Visiting Professor in Jewish Law and Thought at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, New York , and Templeton Fellow at the Herzl Institute program "Philosophy of the Tanakh, Midrash and Talmud" , . Elia Benamozegh European Chair of Sephardic Studies, Livorno, Italy .

#40916

Frank Natterer

#40929

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Frank Natterer is a German mathematician. He was born in Wangen im Allgäu, Germany. Natterer pioneered and shaped the field of mathematical methods in imaging including computed tomography , magnetic resonance imaging and ultrasonic imaging.

#40917

Alissa Nutting

#40930

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (26 years)

Alissa Nutting is an American author, creative writing professor and television writer. Her writing has appeared in Tin House, Fence, BOMB and the fairy tale anthology My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me.

#40918

Joyce Marcus

#40931

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Joyce Marcus is a Latin American archaeologist and professor in the Department of Anthropology, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She also holds the position of Curator of Latin American Archaeology, University of Michigan Museum of Anthropological Archaeology. Marcus has published extensively in the field of Latin American archaeological research. Her focus has been primarily on the Zapotec, Maya, and coastal Andean civilizations of Central and South America. Much of her fieldwork has been concentrated in the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico. She i...

#40919

Anne Hessing Cahn

#40932

Overall Influence

1930 - Present (96 years)

Anne Hessing Cahn is a political author who holds a doctorate in political science from MIT. She was notable for her criticism of the CIA among other US agencies and leaders, particularly Team B and other aspects of the last days of the Cold War.

#40920

Andrew R. Heinze

Andrew R. Heinze

#40933

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Andrew R. Heinze is an American playwright, non-fiction author, and scholar of American history. Growing up in New Jersey in a close-knit Jewish family, he left home at fourteen to attend Blair Academy, graduated from Amherst College in Massachusetts, and moved to California. He did his graduate work at the University of California, Berkeley, training in American history, with an emphasis on the history of race, immigration and the history of American Jews. During his academic career he taught both American and Jewish history at several American universities and was a tenured professor of his...

#40921

Bayless Manning

#40934

Overall Influence

1923 - 2011 (88 years)

Bayless Andrew Manning was an American lawyer, law professor, writer and expert of corporate law. He served as the dean of Stanford Law School from 1964 to 1971. He left Stanford in 1971 and became the first president of the Council on Foreign Relations.

#40922

Bruce Cole

#40935

Overall Influence

1938 - 2018 (80 years)

Bruce Milan Cole was a longtime professor of art history at Indiana University, a Senior Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., a member of the Eisenhower Memorial Commission, and the eighth Chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

#40923

Chris Tucker

#40936

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Christopher Tucker is an American stand-up comedian and actor. Tucker made his debut in 1992 as a stand-up performer on the HBO comedy series Def Comedy Jam, where he frequently appeared on the show during the 1990s. He acted in the films Friday, The Fifth Element, Money Talks, and Jackie Brown, and later gained widespread fame and popularity in the 2000s for playing Detective James Carter in the Rush Hour series.

#40924

Robin Haase

#40937

Overall Influence

1987 - Present (39 years)

Robin Haase is a Dutch professional tennis player. He reached his career-high ATP singles ranking of world No. 33 in July 2012 and his highest doubles ranking of world No. 29 in May 2023. In singles, he has won two titles, at the Austrian Open in 2011 and 2012. He also reached the semifinals of the 2017 Canadian Open, and his best Grand Slam singles result was reaching the third round at the Australian Open and Wimbledon Championships in 2011.

#40925

Tim Teitelbaum

#40938

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Tim Teitelbaum is an American computer scientist known for his early work on integrated development environments , syntax-directed editing, and incremental computation. He is Professor Emeritus at Cornell University. As an educator and faculty member of the Cornell University Computer Science Department since 1973, he was recognized for his large-scale teaching of introductory programming, and for his mentoring of highly successful graduate students. As a businessman, he is known for having co-founded GrammaTech, Inc. and for having been its sole CEO from 1988 to 2019.

#40926

Howard Colquhoun

#40939

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (75 years)

Howard Colquhoun is Emeritus Professor of Materials Chemistry in the University of Reading. He was born in County Durham and was educated at Washington Grammar School and at the University of Cambridge , before moving to the University of London as a postgraduate student in chemistry . At Cambridge he was a member of the University athletics team and was awarded a half-blue for throwing the discus. He carried out postdoctoral work at the University of Warwick, and was then a researcher at the ICI Corporate Laboratory in Cheshire where he and Fraser Stoddart developed a successful collaboration.

#40927

Felix A. Nigro

#40940

Overall Influence

1914 - 2007 (93 years)

Felix Anthony Nigro was a pioneering scholar in public administration. He was included in the International Who's Who and was elected to the National Academy of Public Administration. University studies Felix Nigro did his undergraduate studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison , where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa, and earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from the same university in 1948.

#40928

Yasuo Matsuyama

Yasuo Matsuyama

#40941

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Yasuo Matsuyama is a Japanese researcher in machine learning and human-aware information processing. Matsuyama is a Professor Emeritus and an Honorary Researcher of the Research Institute of Science and Engineering of Waseda University.

#40929

Jun'ichi Yoda

#40942

Overall Influence

1905 - 1997 (92 years)

was a Japanese poet and a leading figure among Japanese authors of children's books during the Shōwa period. Early life Junichi Yoda was born in 1905 in Setaka , Fukuoka, the second son of Yotarō Asayama and Sue, and was adopted as the heir of the Yodas, relatives of the Asayamas.

#40930

Dipankar Das Sarma

#40943

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Dipankar Das Sarma, popularly known as D.D. Sarma, is an Indian scientist and structural chemist, known for his researches in the fields of Solid State Chemistry, Spectroscopy, Condensed Matter Physics, Materials Science, and Nanoscience. He is a former MLS Chair Professor of Physics and Chairman of the Centre for Advanced Materials and the GAST Professor of Uppsala University, Sweden, A recipient of TWAS Physics Prize and the UNESCO Biennial Javed Husain Prize, Sarma was honored by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research , Government of India, in 1994, with the Shanti Swarup Bhatna...

#40931

Rudolph E. Tanzi

Rudolph E. Tanzi

#40944

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (68 years)

Rudolph Emile 'Rudy' Tanzi a professor of Neurology at Harvard University, vice-chair of neurology, director of the Genetics and Aging Research Unit, and co-director of the Henry and Allison McCance Center for Brain Health at Massachusetts General Hospital .

#40932

James Lindgren

#40945

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (74 years)

James Lindgren is a professor of law at Northwestern University. Born in 1952 in Rockford, Illinois, Lindgren graduated from Yale College and the University of Chicago Law School , where he was an editor of the University of Chicago Law Review. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Chicago in 2009.

#40933

Patricia Bergquist

#40946

Overall Influence

1933 - 2009 (76 years)

Dame Patricia Rose Bergquist was a New Zealand zoologist who specialised in anatomy and taxonomy. At the time of her death, she was professor emerita of zoology and honorary professor of anatomy with radiology at the University of Auckland.

#40934

Jan M. Rabaey

#40947

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Jan M. Rabaey is an academic and engineer who is Professor Emeritus and Professor in the Graduate School of in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley. He also serves as the CTO of the Systems Technology Co-Optimization division at imec, Belgium.

#40935

Maurice Nelles

#40948

Overall Influence

1906 - 2011 (105 years)

Maurice Nelles was an engineer, business executive and professor. Early life and education Nelles was born in Madison, South Dakota. Nelles earned a bachelor's degree in 1927 and a master's degree in 1928, both from the University of South Dakota and earned a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1934. While at Harvard, he held the Charles A. Coffin Fellowship and the George H. Emerson and Harvard scholarships.

#40936

Archie J. Bahm

#40949

Overall Influence

1907 - 1996 (89 years)

Archie John Bahm was an American philosopher and professor of philosophy at the University of New Mexico. Biography Bahm served as Acting Chair of the University of New Mexico's Department of Philosophy from 1954 to 1955 and again from 1964 to 1965. He was a member of numerous committees to support and promote the exchange of philosophical ideas and organized the Albuquerque Chapter of the Southwestern Regional American Humanist Association in 1954. He was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto. He was also an organizer, past president, and past secretary-treasurer of the New Mexico Phi...

#40937

John D. Smith

#40950

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

John Dargavel Smith is a former professor of Sanskrit at Cambridge. His studies have primarily focused on topics in the language/literature/culture of Rajasthan. Much of this time was devoted to a major project on the hero-deity Pabuji: this was published in 1991 as The epic of Pabuji .

#40938

Christoph Scherrer

Christoph Scherrer

#40951

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Christoph Scherrer is a German economist and political scientist. Currently, he is a professor of globalization and politics and Executive Director of the International Center for Development and Decent Work at the University of Kassel.

#40939

Frederic A. Gibbs

#40952

Overall Influence

1903 - 1992 (89 years)

Frederic Andrews Gibbs was an American neurologist who was a pioneer in the use of electroencephalography for the diagnosis and treatment of epilepsy. Gibbs graduated from Yale and Johns Hopkins in 1929. He was offered a fellowship in neuropathology by Stanley Cobb, of Harvard Medical School. He studied epilepsy in the same laboratory as William G. Lennox and Erna Leonhardt.

#40940

Antonio Blanco Freijeiro

#40953

Overall Influence

1923 - 1991 (68 years)

Antonio Blanco Freijeiro was a Spanish archaeologist and historian. He was professor of Archaeology, Epigraphy and Numismatics at the University of Seville , of Classical Archeology at the Complutense University of Madrid , and academic librarian of the Royal Academy of History .

#40941

Monique Laurent

#40954

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Monique Laurent is a French computer scientist and mathematician who is an expert in mathematical optimization. She is a researcher at the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica in Amsterdam where she is also a member of the Management Team. Laurent also holds a part-time position as a professor of econometrics and operations research at Tilburg University.

#40942

Ulrich S. Schubert

Ulrich S. Schubert

#40955

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Ulrich Sigmar Schubert is a German chemist and full professor for Organic and Macromolecular Chemistry at the Friedrich-Schiller University Jena. Academic and professional background Ulrich S. Schubert studied chemistry at the Universities of Frankfurt am Main and Bayreuth, with a stay abroad in Richmond, Virginia, US. He received his doctorate in Bayreuth including a research stay in Tampa, Florida , and had a post-doc stay in Strasbourg with Jean-Marie Lehn . He did his habilitation at the Technical University of Munich . His research focuses on macro- and supramolecular chemistry, which pr...

#40943

Fouad Ibrahim

#40956

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Fouad N. Ibrahim is professor emeritus at the Institute of Geography at the University of Bayreuth in Bavaria, Germany. Ibrahim has introduced the term desertification from French & English African geography into German-language geography. He is considered as one of the few German experts on Darfur, a region on which he wrote his Habilitation-Thesis "Desertification in Nord-Darfur" - and which is considered to this day as one of the milestone works of the geography of northern Sudan. Ibrahim was also engaged in calling worldwide attention to the humanitarian crisis in Darfur.

#40944

Ichiro Fujimori

#40957

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Ichiro Fujimori is a Japanese electrical engineer who specializes in data converters and communication systems. He is currently the VP of R&D at Broadcom Corporation and a visiting professor at Kobe University.

#40945

Brant J. Pitre

#40958

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Brant James Pitre is an American New Testament scholar and Distinguished Research Professor of Scripture at the Augustine Institute. He has written extensively on the historical Jesus, the Virgin Mary, Paul the Apostle, the origin of the Eucharist, and the canonical Gospels.

#40946

Hiram Caton

#40959

Overall Influence

1936 - 2010 (74 years)

Hiram Pendleton Caton III was a professor of politics and history at Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia, until his retirement. He was an ethicist, a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Biology , and a founding member of the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences. He was an officer of the International Society for Human Ethology. Caton held a National Humanities Fellowship at the National Humanities Center in 1982–83. He was the inaugural Professor of Humanities at Griffith University in Brisbane, and later the Professor of Politics and History and Head of the School of Applied...

#40947

Elizabeth F. Neufeld

Elizabeth F. Neufeld

#40960

Overall Influence

1928 - Present (98 years)

Elizabeth Fondal Neufeld is a French-American geneticist whose research has focused on the genetic basis of metabolic disease in humans. Life Neufeld and her Russian Jewish family emigrated to the United States from Paris in 1940; they had left Europe as refugees to escape Nazi persecution. The family settled in New York, where she attended Hunter College High School before graduating from Queens College in 1948 with a Bachelor of Science. She went on to work as a research assistant at the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, looking at blood disorders in mice. Later on, she attended graduate school at University of California, Berkeley, where she earned a Ph.D.

#40948

Gizem Saka

#40961

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (48 years)

Gizem Saka is a contemporary Turkish artist and an economist. She is a senior lecturer at the Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania, and a visiting lecturer at Harvard University, teaching art markets.

#40949

Alfred Schnittke

#40962

Overall Influence

1934 - 1998 (64 years)

Alfred Garrievich Schnittke was a Russian composer of Jewish-German descent. Among the most performed and recorded composers of late 20th-century classical music, he is described by musicologist Ivan Moody as a "composer who was concerned in his music to depict the moral and spiritual struggles of contemporary man in [...] depth and detail."

#40950

Caroline Woolard

#40963

Overall Influence

1984 - Present (42 years)

Caroline Woolard is an American artist and organizer, whose work explores intersections between art and the solidarity economy. She primarily works collaboratively and collectively and was a founding member of Trade School, OurGoods, BFAMFAPhD and the New York City Real Estate Investment Cooperative. Woolard previously worked as an Assistant Professor of Sculpture at the University of Hartford and a mentor at the School of Visual Arts. She is now working for Open Collective and Open Collective Foundation.

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