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

#40951

Alex Padilla

#40964

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Alejandro "Alex" Padilla is an American politician serving as the senior United States senator from California, a seat he has held since 2021. A member of the Democratic Party, Padilla served as the 30th secretary of state of California from 2015 to 2021 and was a member of the California State Senate and the Los Angeles City Council.

#40952

Harold R. Parks

#40965

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Harold Raymond Parks is an American mathematician and is a professor emeritus of mathematics at Oregon State University. Parks obtained his Ph.D. in 1974 from Princeton University, under the supervision of Frederick J. Almgren, Jr. In 2012, he became a fellow of the American Mathematical Society.

#40953

Art Carney

#40966

Overall Influence

1918 - 2003 (85 years)

Arthur William Matthew Carney was an American actor and comedian. A recipient of an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and six Primetime Emmy Awards, he was best known for his role as Ed Norton on the sitcom The Honeymooners .

#40954

D. Stephen Long

#40967

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Duane Stephen Long , also known as D. Stephen Long, is the Cary M. Maguire University Professor of Ethics at Southern Methodist University. Previously, Long was Professor of Systematic Theology at Marquette University. He specializes in systematic theology, Christian ethics, and political theology. His books include The Divine Economy: Theology and Market, which details a Christian approach to economics based in the thought of radical orthodoxy, The Goodness of God: Theology, Church and Social Order and Christian Ethics: A Very Short Introduction.

#40955

Shelley Long

#40968

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Shelley Long is an American actress, singer, and comedian. For her role as Diane Chambers on the hit sitcom Cheers, Long received five Emmy nominations, winning in 1983 for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series. She also won two Golden Globe Awards for the role. Long reprised her role as Diane Chambers in three episodes of the spin-off Frasier, for which she received an additional guest star Emmy nomination. In 2009, she began playing the recurring role of DeDe Pritchett on the ABC comedy series Modern Family.

#40956

Susan Hackwood

#40969

Overall Influence

Susan Hackwood is the executive director of the California Council on Science and Technology . She is a professor and researcher of electrical engineering credited for inventing the concept of electrowetting with Gerardo Beni in 1981.

#40957

Cosmo Campoli

#40970

Overall Influence

1923 - 1997 (74 years)

Cosmo Campoli was a Chicago-based sculptor, known for his figurative work centered on the themes of birth and death, and for his use of bold, surreal bird and egg imagery. He was a member of a group of School of the Art Institute of Chicago artists collectively dubbed the "Monster Roster" by critic Franz Schulze in the late 1950s, based on their affinity for sometimes gruesome, expressive figuration, fantasy and mythology, and existential thought. That group included, among others, Leon Golub, George Cohen, June Leaf, H.C. Westermann, Seymour Rosofsky, and Theodore Halkin. Campoli rose to pro...

#40958

John Garside

#40971

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Professor John Garside is a British chemical engineer who was the last Vice-Chancellor of UMIST. Life Garside was born 9 October 1941, and studied chemical engineering at University College, London , gaining BSc in 1963 and PhD in 1966. He then worked for ICI in Teesside before becoming a lecturer, then later a reader in chemical engineering at UCL. During this time he was Fulbright Senior Scholar at Iowa State University in 1976. In 1982 he was appointed professor and head of the Chemical Engineering Department at UMIST. In 2000 Garside became the Vice-Chancellor of UMIST, and oversaw its merger with the University of Manchester in 2004.

#40959

Thomas M. Liggett

#40972

Overall Influence

1944 - 2020 (76 years)

Thomas Milton Liggett was a mathematician at the University of California, Los Angeles. He worked in probability theory, specializing in interacting particle systems. Early life Thomas Milton Liggett was born on March 29, 1944, in Danville, Kentucky. Liggett moved at the age of two with his missionary parents to Latin America, where he was educated in Bueno Aires, Argentina and San Juan, Puerto Rico. He graduated from Oberlin College with a Bachelor of Arts in 1965, where he was influenced towards probability by Samuel Goldberg , an ex-student of William Feller. He moved to Stanford, taking c...

#40960

Andrew West

#40973

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Andrew Christopher West is an English Sinologist. His first works concerned Chinese novels of the Ming and Qing dynasties. His study of Romance of the Three Kingdoms used a new approach to analyse the relationship among the various versions, extrapolating the original text of that novel.

#40961

Eric Church

#40974

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (49 years)

Kenneth Eric Church is an American country music singer-songwriter. He has released nine studio albums through Capitol Nashville since 2005. His debut album, 2006's Sinners Like Me, produced three singles on the Billboard country charts including the top 20 hits "How 'Bout You", "Two Pink Lines", and "Guys Like Me".

#40962

Jack K. Hale

#40975

Overall Influence

1928 - 2009 (81 years)

Jack Kenneth Hale was an American mathematician working primarily in the field of dynamical systems and functional differential equations. Biography Jack Hale defended his Ph.D. thesis "On the Asymptotic Behavior of the Solutions of Systems of Differential Equations" at Purdue University under Lamberto Cesari in 1954; his undergraduate years were spent at Berea College, where he was studying Mathematics until 1949.

#40963

Benjamin Lee

#40976

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Benjamin Lee is a professor of anthropology and philosophy at The New School, where he also served as provost from 2006 until 2008. Lee's primary academic interests include contemporary China; the cultural dimensions of globalization, particularly the effects of global financial flows; and modern theories of language.

#40964

José Lutzenberger

#40977

Overall Influence

1926 - 2002 (76 years)

José Antônio Kroeff Lutzenberger was a Brazilian agronomist and environmentalist. In 1988, he was awarded the Right Livelihood Award for his "contribution to protecting the natural environment in Brazil and worldwide".

#40965

Nicolas Monod

#40978

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Nicolas Monod is a professor at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and known for work on bounded cohomology, ergodic theory, geometry , locally compact groups and amenability. He was born in Montreux, Switzerland. He obtained his PhD from ETH Zurich in 2001 with thesis "Continuous Bounded Cohomology of Locally Compact Groups" written under the direction of Marc Burger.

#40966

Jerry Hirsch

#40979

Overall Influence

1922 - 2008 (86 years)

Jerome Edwin Hirsch was an American psychologist known for his pioneering work in behavior genetics, and for his advocacy for social justice. He has been described as "the pioneer who brought quantitative genetic analysis to the study of behavior."

#40967

Albert Crewe

#40980

Overall Influence

1927 - 2009 (82 years)

Albert Victor Crewe was a British-born American physicist and inventor of the modern scanning transmission electron microscope capable of taking still and motion pictures of atoms, a technology that provided new insights into atomic interaction and enabled significant advances in and had wide-reaching implications for the biomedical, semiconductor, and computing industries.

#40968

Riccardo Giovanelli

#40981

Overall Influence

1946 - 2022 (76 years)

Riccardo Giovanelli was an Italian-born American astronomer. He was an emeritus professor of astronomy at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, United States. Background Born at Praticello, in northern Italy, Giovanelli spent his childhood years in western Argentina but returned with his family to Italy when he was ready to enter university. He studied physics first at the University of Parma and graduated with his laurea cum laude in physics from the University of Bologna in 1969. His parents were partisans during World War II.

#40969

John Pfaff

#40982

Overall Influence

John F. Pfaff is an American law professor at Fordham University. He previously served as a John M. Olin Fellow at the Northwestern University School of Law and as a clerk for Judge Stephen F. Williams on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He was educated at the University of Chicago. His 2017 book Locked In argues that conventional wisdom regarding the causes of high rates of incarceration in the United States is wrong, arguing that, for example, the war on drugs has played a much smaller role than generally thought. Instead, he argues that rising violent...

#40970

Laverne Cox

#40983

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Laverne Cox is an American actress and LGBT advocate. She rose to prominence with her role as Sophia Burset on the Netflix series Orange Is the New Black, becoming the first transgender person to be nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award in an acting category, and the first to be nominated for an Emmy Award since composer Angela Morley in 1990. In 2015, she won a Daytime Emmy Award in Outstanding Special Class Special as executive producer for Laverne Cox Presents: The T Word, making her the first trans woman to win the award. In 2017, she became the first transgender person to play a transgender series regular on U.S.

#40971

Jeff Schweitzer

Jeff Schweitzer

#40984

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Jeff Schweitzer is an American non-fiction author, scientist, political commentator and proponent of scientific skepticism. His published works are largely devoted to the interrelationship between politics, morality, religion and science. He is a blogger for The Huffington Post.

#40972

Darrell Kirch

#40985

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Darrell G. Kirch is an American physician who is president and CEO emeritus of the Association of American Medical Colleges . He trained as a psychiatrist and neuroscientist, before going on to hold senior administrative positions at several medical colleges.

#40973

Ray J

#40986

Overall Influence

1981 - Present (45 years)

William Ray Norwood Jr. , known professionally as Ray J, is an American R&B singer. Born in McComb, Mississippi, and raised in Carson, California, he is the younger brother of singer and actress Brandy Norwood and the first cousin of rapper Snoop Dogg. In January 2017, he competed in the nineteenth season of the British reality television series Celebrity Big Brother.

#40974

Hazel R. O'Leary

#40987

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (89 years)

Hazel Reid O'Leary is an American lawyer, politician and university administrator who served as the 7th United States secretary of energy from 1993 to 1997. A member of the Democratic Party, O'Leary was the first woman and first African American to hold that post. She also served as the 14th president of Fisk University from 2004 to 2013, a historically black college and her alma mater. O'Leary's tenure at Fisk came amid financial difficulty for the school, during which time she increased enrollment and contentiously used the school's art collection to raise funds.

#40975

David Brumley

#40988

Overall Influence

David Brumley is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University. He is a well-known researcher in software security, network security, and applied cryptography. Prof. Brumley also worked for 5 years as a Computer Security Officer for Stanford University.

#40976

Bobby Flay

#40989

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Robert William Flay is an American celebrity chef, restaurateur, and reality television personality. Flay is the owner and executive chef of several restaurants and franchises, including Bobby's Burger Palace, Bobby's Burgers, and Amalfi. He has worked with Food Network since 1995, which won him four Daytime Emmy Awards and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

#40977

Michael Maar

#40990

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Michael Maar is a German literary scholar, germanist and author. For his 1995 doctoral dissertation on Thomas Mann, titled Geister und Kunst, he was awarded the Johann Heinrich Merck Prize by the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung. He was himself elected a member of the academy in 2002. He was a Fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin from 1997 to 1998, and Visiting Professor at Stanford University in 2002. From 2005 to 2006 he was a Fellow of the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Stiftung. In 2008, he became a member of the Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste.

#40978

John Lawrence

#40991

Overall Influence

1933 - Present (93 years)

John Lawrence is an English illustrator and wood engraver. He has twice won the Francis Williams Award for illustration , and twice been runner-up for the Kurt Emil - Maschler Award. He has also published children's books in his own right including This Little Chick which was a New York Times Book Review Best Illustrated Children’s Book of the Year. He was master of the Art Workers' Guild in 1990, and now lives in Cambridge.

#40979

Gina Neff

#40992

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (55 years)

Gina Neff is the Executive Director of the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy at the University of Cambridge. Neff was previously Professor of Technology & Society at the Oxford Internet Institute and the Department of Sociology at the University of Oxford. Neff is an organizational sociologist whose research explores the social and organizational impact of new communication technologies, with a focus on innovation, the digital transformation of industries, and how new technologies impact work.

#40980

Eoghan Casey

#40993

Overall Influence

Eoghan Casey is a digital forensics professional, researcher, and author. Casey has conducted a wide range of digital investigations, including data breaches, fraud, violent crimes, identity theft, and on-line criminal activity. He is also a member of the Digital/Multimedia Scientific Area Committee of the Organization for Scientific Area Committees. He helps organize the digital forensic research DFRWS.org conferences each year, and is on the DFRWS Board of Directors. He has a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, an M.A. in Educational Communication and Technology from New York University, and a Ph.D.

#40981

Marcia Gay Harden

Marcia Gay Harden

#40994

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Marcia Gay Harden is an American actress. She is the recipient of various accolades, including an Academy Award and a Tony Award, in addition to nominations for three Primetime Emmy Awards. Born in the La Jolla area of San Diego, California, Harden began her acting career appearing in television programs throughout the 1980s. In 1986, she appeared in her first film role, with her breakthrough coming in the 1990 Coen brothers–directed Miller's Crossing. For her portrayal of artist Lee Krasner in the 2000 biographical film Pollock, she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She rece...

#40982

Mike Dirnt

#40995

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Michael Ryan Pritchard , better known by his stage name Mike Dirnt, is an American rock musician who is the co-founder, bassist, backing vocalist, and occasional lead vocalist of Green Day. He has also played in several other bands, including the Frustrators. His stage name Dirnt was originally a nickname that his friends from grade school gave him, as he constantly played "air bass/guitar" and made a "dirnt, dirnt, dirnt" noise while pretending to pluck the strings.

#40983

Jean Dujardin

#40996

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (54 years)

Jean Edmond Dujardin is a French actor and comedian. He began his career as a stand-up comedian in Paris before guest starring in comedic television programmes and films. He first came to prominence with the cult TV series Un gars, une fille , in which he starred alongside his partner Alexandra Lamy, before becoming a popular film actor with comedies such as Brice de Nice , Michel Hazanavicius's OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies , its sequel OSS 117: Lost in Rio , and 99 Francs .

#40984

Federico Hernández Denton

#40997

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Federico Hernández Denton was the 15th chief justice of the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico. Biography Hernández Denton received a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard College in 1966 and a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School in 1969.

#40985

Brigitte Vallée

#40998

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Brigitte Vallée is a French mathematician and computer scientist. She entered the École Normale Supérieure de Jeunes Filles in 1970, and received her PhD in 1986 at the University of Caen . Her doctoral advisor was Jacques Stern.

#40986

Irwin Allen

#40999

Overall Influence

1916 - 1991 (75 years)

Irwin Allen was an American film and television producer and director, known for his work in science fiction, then later as the "Master of Disaster" for his work in the disaster film genre. His most successful productions were The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno . He also created and produced the popular 1960s science-fiction television series Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Lost in Space, The Time Tunnel, and Land of the Giants.

#40987

B. V. Subbamma

#41000

Overall Influence

1925 - 2009 (84 years)

B. V. Subbamma also known as Bathineni Venkata Subbamma was an Indian theologian and scholar. Noted for founding Christian ashrams, she was widely recognized for her analysis of Christianity from a cultural perspective. She was one of the first women in India to attain theological training and was one of the inaugural women pastors ordained by the Andhra Evangelical Lutheran Church in 1999 at AELC-St. Matthews West Parish, Guntur.

#40988

Dietmar Hamann

#41001

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Dietmar Johann Wolfgang "Didi" Hamann is a German professional football coach, former player and media personality. Throughout his career, he has played for Bayern Munich, Newcastle United, Liverpool and Manchester City primarily in a defensive midfield position. He also spent time at Milton Keynes Dons as a player/coach before joining Leicester City as a first team coach. He was a member of the Germany national team from 1997 until 2006 and represented his nation in two FIFA World Cups and two UEFA European Championships, reaching the 2002 FIFA World Cup final. He is known in Ireland as a fo...

#40989

Bernice A. Pescosolido

#41002

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Bernice A. Pescosolido is an American sociologist, currently a Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Director of the Indiana Consortium for Mental Health Services Research at Indiana University, and also a published author. From 1998 to 2006, she was also the Chancellor's Professor of Indiana University. She has also served as Vice-President of the American Sociological Association and its Chair of Sociology of Mental Health and Medical Sociology.

#40990

Vladimir Nikolayevich Petrov

Vladimir Nikolayevich Petrov

#41003

Overall Influence

1915 - 1999 (84 years)

Vladimir Nikolayevich Petrov was at various times an academic, philatelist, prisoner, forced laborer, political prisoner, adventurer, factory worker, chess player and writer of short stories and autobiographies. He was at various times a Russian, American, and man of no country, though he was brought up in the USSR and died in the United States. Most of the information concerning his life originates from his personal memoirs, entitled Soviet Gold and My Retreat from Russia and collected in the published work Escape from the Future.

#40991

Juozas Girnius

#41004

Overall Influence

1915 - 1994 (79 years)

Juozas Girnius was a Lithuanian existentialist philosopher. His philosophy combined existentialism, Catholicism, and Lithuanian nationalism. Together with Antanas Maceina and Stasys Šalkauskis, Girnius became a cornerstone of modern Lithuanian philosophy. In 1994, he was awarded the Order of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas.

#40992

Kevin Gutzman

#41005

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Kevin R. Constantine Gutzman is an American constitutional scholar and historian. He is Professor of History at Western Connecticut State University. Biography Gutzman holds a B.A. from the University of Texas ; a J.D. from the University of Texas School of Law , a Master of Public Affairs from the LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas , and an M.A. and the PhD in history from the University of Virginia.

#40993

Michael S. Roth

Michael S. Roth

#41006

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (69 years)

Michael Scott Roth is an American academic and university administrator. He became the 16th president of Wesleyan University in 2007. Formerly, he was the 8th president of the California College of the Arts , associate director of the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, and Director of European Studies at Claremont Graduate University. He was also the H.B. Professor of Humanities at Scripps College, where he was the founding director of the Scripps College Humanities Institute.

#40994

Lamar Jackson

#41007

Overall Influence

1997 - Present (29 years)

Lamar Demeatrice Jackson Jr. is an American football quarterback for the Baltimore Ravens of the National Football League . He played college football for the Louisville Cardinals, where he won the Heisman Trophy during his sophomore year, and was selected by the Ravens as the final first round pick of the 2018 NFL Draft. Jackson became the Ravens' starting quarterback in his rookie season after an injury to incumbent Joe Flacco and clinched a division title with the team, also becoming the youngest NFL quarterback to start a playoff game at age 21.

#40995

Barbara Dilley

#41008

Overall Influence

1938 - Present (88 years)

Barbara Dilley is an American dancer, performance artist, improvisor, choreographer and educator, best known for her work as a prominent member of the Merce Cunningham Dance Company , and then with the groundbreaking dance and performance ensemble The Grand Union, from 1969 to 1976. She has taught movement and dance at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, since 1974, developing a pedagogy that emphasizes what she calls “embodied awareness,” an approach that combines dance and movement studies with meditation, “mind training” and improvisational composition. She served as the president of ...

#40996

Giacomo Mauro D'Ariano

Giacomo Mauro D'Ariano

#41009

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Giacomo Mauro D'Ariano is an Italian quantum physicist. He is a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Pavia, where he is the leader of the QUIT group. He is a member of the Center of Photonic Communication and Computing at Northwestern University; a member of the Istituto Lombardo Accademia di Scienze e Lettere; and a member of the Foundational Questions Institute .

#40997

Bertice Berry

#41010

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Bertice Berry is an American sociologist, author, lecturer, and educator. Early life and education Berry grew up in Wilmington, Delaware, as one of seven children raised by a single mother. The family was poor and her mother struggled with alcoholism. In a 1994 article, Berry reflected on her upbringing and her mother's abusiveness when she was "in one of her frightening stages of drunkenness." Berry ultimately forgave her mother, writing that "her drinking was a way to mask her own pain. I think of the burden she endured as a black woman with few resources for herself or her children."

#40998

John L. Carroll

#41011

Overall Influence

John Lawrence Carroll was an American judge and academic administrator who was a U.S. magistrate judge for the Middle District of Alabama from 1986 to 2001. He was also a member of the Judicial Conference of the United States's Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. He served as the dean of the Cumberland School of Law in Homewood, Alabama, from 2001 to 2014.

#40999

Vince Carlin

#41012

Overall Influence

Vincent A. Carlin is a retired Canadian journalist. He was the ombudsman of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation from January 2006 to December 2010, serving a five-year term with the corporation. Carlin has since been succeeded by Mr. Kirk Lapointe and Esther Enkin.

#41000

J. Dennis O'Connor

#41013

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

John Dennis O'Connor is an American biologist and was the sixteenth chancellor of the University of Pittsburgh. Career In addition to the University of Pittsburgh, O'Connor has held executive positions at UCLA, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Smithsonian Institution, and the University of Maryland, College Park.

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