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

#41551

David Kershaw

#41564

Overall Influence

David Kershaw is a Professor of Law at the London School of Economics and the current Dean of LSE Law School. His research is focused on company law. As well as the author of a leading company law textbook, Kershaw's expertise focuses on accounting principles for companies, for which his work on post-Enron regulation received the Modern Law Review Wedderburn Prize, directors' duties, takeovers and workplace participation.

#41552

Marvin E. Frankel

#41565

Overall Influence

1920 - 2002 (82 years)

Marvin Earle Frankel was a litigator, a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, a professor at Columbia Law School, and a legal scholar whose views helped to establish sentencing guidelines for the federal courts.

#41553

Patrice Leconte

Patrice Leconte

#41566

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Patrice Leconte is a French film director, actor, comic strip writer, and screenwriter. Life and career Leconte grew up in Tours, and began making little amateur films at 15. He went to Paris in 1967 and studied at Institut des hautes études cinématographiques. While attending film school in the late 1960s, Leconte also worked as a cartoonist, in particular for the Franco-Belgian comics magazine Pilote. He directed his first feature film in 1976, and had a number of major successes with comedy films that were barely distributed outside France. He first came to international attention in 198...

#41554

Karen Hallberg

#41567

Overall Influence

1964 - Present (62 years)

Karen Astrid Hallberg is an Argentine scientist and professor of physics at the Balseiro Institute. and at the Bariloche Atomic Centre. Se was awarded the 2019 L'Oreal-UNESCO Award for Women in Science Laureate.

#41555

Ivan Roitt

#41568

Overall Influence

1927 - Present (99 years)

Ivan Maurice Roitt is a British scientist. He was educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham and Balliol College, Oxford University. He was Head of the Department of Immunology at University College London from 1967 to 1992, and is currently Honorary Director of the Centre for Investigative & Diagnostic Oncology at Middlesex University, London, and is related to multi-award winning radio producer Colin Roitt.

#41556

Quinn Buckner

#41569

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (72 years)

William Quinn Buckner is an American former professional basketball player and coach. He played collegiate basketball for the Indiana University Hoosiers, and won a national championship in 1976. He was a captain of both the last undefeated NCAA Division I basketball champion and the 1976 Olympics gold medal team. Buckner was selected by the Milwaukee Bucks with the 7th pick of the 1976 NBA draft. He had a ten-year NBA career for three teams . In 1984, he won an NBA title with the Celtics.

#41557

Brian Holland

#41570

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Brian Holland is an American songwriter and record producer, best known as a member of Holland–Dozier–Holland, the songwriting and production team that was responsible for much of the Motown sound, and numerous hit records by artists such as Martha and the Vandellas, The Supremes, The Four Tops, and The Isley Brothers. Holland, along with Lamont Dozier, served as the team's musical arranger and producer. He has written or co-written 145 hits in US and 78 in the UK.

#41558

Daniel Jackson

#41571

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (63 years)

Daniel Jackson is a professor of Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . He is the principal designer of the Alloy modelling language, and author of the book Software Abstractions: Logic, Language, and Analysis.

#41559

Susan L. Woodward

#41572

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (82 years)

Susan Lampland Woodward is a professor at the Political Science Program at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York since 2001. She is an expert on Balkan, East European, and post-Soviet affairs, on intervention in civil wars, and on postconflict reconstruction. She is the author of two books, Balkan Tragedy: Chaos and Dissolution after the Cold War , and Socialist Unemployment: The Political Economy of Yugoslavia , about which the reviewer in Foreign Affairs wrote, "Woodward's argument is big and bold, challenging almost every major interpretation, from capitalist assumptions ...

#41560

Carol R. Ember

#41573

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Carol R. Ember is an American cultural anthropologist, cross-cultural researcher and a writer of books on anthropology. She is now the President of the Human Relations Area Files at Yale University.

#41561

Rouben Paul Adalian

#41574

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Rouben Paul Adalian is the Director of the Armenian National Institute in Washington, D.C., and a professor at the Elliott School of International Affairs of George Washington University and at Johns Hopkins University.

#41562

Katy Deepwell

#41575

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Katy Deepwell is a feminist art critic and academic, based in London. She is the founder and editor of n.paradoxa: international feminist art journal, published 1998-2017, in 40 volumes by KT press. She founded KT press as a feminist not-for-profit publishing company to publish the journal and books on feminist art. KT press has published 8 e-books, supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. In Feb 2017, Katy Deepwell wrote and published a MOOC on feminism and contemporary art at. In May 2020, a second advanced course on feminist art manifestos was added to the site. The mod...

#41563

Klaus Törnudd

#41576

Overall Influence

1931 - Present (95 years)

Klaus Mattias Törnudd is a Finnish diplomat and researcher in politics and international politics. He has been a professor and ambassador for political science. The parents of Klaus Törnudd were the translator Allan Viktor Törnudd and Helene Margareta Niininen, a child care inspector who became known as a writer. He belongs to his father's side in to the Törnudd family.

#41564

Milton Terris

#41577

Overall Influence

1915 - 2002 (87 years)

Milton Terris was an American public health physician and epidemiologist. He graduated from Columbia University in 1935 and completed his MD at the New York University School of Medicine in 1939 and his MPH from Johns Hopkins University in 1944. He was associate professor of preventive medicine at the State University of New York at Buffalo from 1951 through 1957, and was professor of epidemiology at Tulane University from 1958 through 1960. He was head of the Chronic Disease Unit of the New York City Public Health Research Institute from 1960 through 1963. In 1964 he became professor and cha...

#41565

Steve Howe

#41578

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (79 years)

Stephen James Howe is an English musician, best known as the guitarist and backing vocalist in the progressive rock band Yes across three stints since 1970. Born in Holloway, North London, Howe developed an interest in the guitar and began to learn the instrument himself at age 12. He embarked on a music career in 1964, first playing in several London-based blues, covers, and psychedelic rock bands for six years, including the Syndicats, Tomorrow, and Bodast.

#41566

Yeleazar Meletinsky

#41579

Overall Influence

1918 - 2005 (87 years)

Eleazar Moiseevich Meletinskii was a Russian scholar famous for his seminal studies of folklore, literature, philology and the history and theory of narrative; he was one of the major figures of Russian academia in those fields.

#41567

Maceo Parker

#41580

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Maceo Parker is an American funk and soul jazz saxophonist, best known for his work with James Brown in the 1960s, Parliament-Funkadelic in the 1970s and Prince in the 2000s. Parker was a prominent soloist on many of Brown's hit recordings, and a key part of his band, playing alto, tenor and baritone saxophones. Since the early 1990s, he has toured under his own name.

#41568

Frank McKenna

#41581

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Francis Joseph McKenna is a Canadian businessman and former politician and diplomat. He is currently Deputy Chairman of the Toronto-Dominion Bank. He served as Canadian Ambassador to the United States from 2005 to 2006. He served as the 27th premier of New Brunswick from 1987 to 1997, winning every seat in the province in his first election.

#41569

Russell Berman

#41582

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Russell A. Berman is an American academic and professor specializing in German studies and Comparative literature. He serves as the Walter A. Haas Professor in the Humanities at Stanford University. He is also a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is the director of Stanford's Thinking Matters program. He previously served as associate dean and director of Stanford's Overseas Studies Program.

#41570

Gregory Robert Choppin

#41583

Overall Influence

1927 - 2015 (88 years)

Gregory Robert Choppin was an American nuclear chemist and co-discoverer of the element mendelevium, atomic number 101. Others in the discovery group were Albert Ghiorso, Bernard G. Harvey, Stanley G. Thompson, and Glenn T. Seaborg. The element was named in honor of Dmitri Mendeleev.

#41571

Peter Thornton

#41584

Overall Influence

1925 - 2007 (82 years)

Peter Kai Thornton CBE was a museum curator and writer. The son of eminent scientist Sir Gerard Thornton and Gerda, daughter of Kai Norregaard, of Copenhagen , Thornton was educated at Bryanston, which he left aged 14 to enrol at the de Havilland aeronautical technical school and work on the Mosquito production line at Hatfield, Hertfordshire; after serving during World War II in the Intelligence Corps, he went up to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he read Danish and German .

#41572

Itamar Procaccia

Itamar Procaccia

#41585

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Itamar Procaccia is an Israeli physicist and chemist who has made contributions to areas in statistical physics, nonlinear dynamics, soft matter, and turbulence. Procaccia studied chemistry at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem with and obtained a bachelor's degree in 1973 and obtained a doctorate in theoretical chemistry in 1976. From 1977 to 1979, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Since 1979 he has been at the Weizmann Institute, where he became a professor in 1985.

#41573

Timothy Barrett

#41586

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Timothy D. Barrett is an American papermaker, and director of the Center for the Book, at the University of Iowa, from 1996 to 2002. He remains on the staff of the Center for the Book, and in 2009 received a MacArthur Foundation grant.

#41574

Edwin Wilson

#41587

Overall Influence

1923 - Present (103 years)

Edwin Graves Wilson is an American retired professor of English literature at Wake Forest University. His professional academic and administrative tenure at Wake Forest spanned from 1951 until his retirement in 1993.

#41575

Kyrsten Sinema

#41588

Overall Influence

1976 - Present (50 years)

Kyrsten Lea Sinema is an American politician and former social worker serving as the senior United States senator from Arizona, a seat she has held since 2019. A former member of the Democratic Party, Sinema became an independent in December 2022.

#41576

Samuel O. Freedman

#41589

Overall Influence

1928 - Present (98 years)

Samuel Orkin Freedman, is a Canadian clinical immunologist, professor and academic administrator. In 1965, he co-discovered with Phil Gold the carcinoembryonic antigen, the basis of a blood test used in the diagnosis and management of people with colorectal cancer.

#41577

Viola Priesemann

#41590

Overall Influence

1982 - Present (44 years)

Viola Priesemann is a German physicist and computational neuroscientist. One of her research priorities is to explore how the human brain organizes its neuronal capacities, to enable meaningful information processing.

#41578

Walter R. Tschinkel

Walter R. Tschinkel

#41591

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (86 years)

Walter R. Tschinkel is an American myrmecologist, entomologist and Distinguished Research Professor of Biological Science and R.O. Lawton Distinguished Professor emeritus at Florida State University. He is the author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated book The Fire Ants , the book Ant Architecture: The Wonder, Beauty, and Science of Underground Nests , and more than 150 original research papers on the natural history, ecology, nest architecture and organization of ant societies; chemical communication in beetles; and the mysterious fairy circles of the Namib desert. His casts of ant nests and bot...

#41579

Arline Geronimus

#41592

Overall Influence

Arline T. Geronimus is an American public health researcher and a professor of Health Behavior & Health Education at the University of Michigan, as well as a research professor at the University of Michigan's Population Studies Center. Geronimus is known for proposing the weathering hypothesis in 1992, which posits that cumulative racism experienced by black women cause them to experience inferior birth outcomes as their maternal age increases. She has also studied other issues regarding pregnancy, including the effect of teenage childbearing on the mother's economic status and the effect of immigration enforcement raids on low birth weight.

#41580

Paweł Rowiński

#41593

Overall Influence

1965 - Present (61 years)

Paweł Mariusz Rowiński is a Polish hydrogeologist, hydrodynamicist, geophysicist, full professor at the Institute of Geophysics, Polish Academy of Sciences, a full member of the Polish Academy of Sciences, vice-president of the Polish Academy of Sciences .

#41581

Robert Crawford

#41594

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Robert Crawford is a Scottish poet, scholar and critic. He is emeritus Professor of English at the University of St Andrews. Early life Robert Crawford was born in Bellshill, Scotland, and grew up in Cambuslang. He was educated at the private Hutchesons' Grammar School and in the same city at Glasgow University, where he received his M.A. degree. He then went to Balliol College, Oxford, where he received his D. Phil.

#41582

Deacon Jones

#41595

Overall Influence

1938 - 2013 (75 years)

David D. "Deacon" Jones was an American football defensive end who played in the National Football League for 14 seasons. He played for the Los Angeles Rams, San Diego Chargers, and the Washington Redskins. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1980.

#41583

Maurice Lucas

#41596

Overall Influence

1952 - 2010 (58 years)

Maurice Lucas was an American professional basketball player who played in the American Basketball Association and the National Basketball Association . He was a four-time NBA All-Star and won an NBA championship with the Portland Trail Blazers in 1977. He was named to the ABA All-Time Team.

#41584

Harry Harding

#41597

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Harry Harding is an American political scientist specializing in Chinese politics and foreign affairs. He was the founding dean of the Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia, and previously served as dean of the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. Harding has advised several US Presidents on developments in the PRC; before the Tiananmen Square demonstrations he was brought to Camp David for informal discussions with the George H. W. Bush administration. He has written several books, including China's Second Revolution and A Fragile Relationship: The United States and China Since 1972.

#41585

Peter Saville

#41598

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (80 years)

Peter Francis Saville was a British chartered occupational psychologist specialising in psychometrics, personality and talent management. He co-founded Saville and Holdsworth Ltd in 1977. He was founder and chairman of the Saville Consulting Group from 2006 to 2015 when it was sold to Towers Watson .

#41586

Rudy Van Gelder

Rudy Van Gelder

#41599

Overall Influence

1924 - 2016 (92 years)

Rudolph Van Gelder was an American recording engineer who specialized in jazz. Over more than half a century, he recorded several thousand sessions, with musicians including Booker Ervin, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins, Art Blakey, Lee Morgan, Joe Henderson, Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter, Horace Silver, Herbie Hancock, Grant Green and George Benson. He worked with many different record companies, and recorded almost every session on Blue Note Records from 1953 to 1967.

#41587

Sydney M. Finegold

#41600

Overall Influence

1921 - 2018 (97 years)

Sydney "Sid" Martin Finegold was an American physician, medical school professor, and medical researcher, specializing in anaerobic bacteriology. Biography Born in New York City to Russian, Jewish immigrant parents who worked as pharmacists, Sydney Finegold had a sister and an older brother. The family moved to Los Angeles in the early 1930s. Sydney Finegold graduated in 1943 from the University of California, Los Angeles with a bacteriology major and served from 1943 to 1945 in the US Marine Corps. After WWII ended, he matriculated at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, where he graduated in 1949 with an M.D.

#41588

Catherine Day

#41601

Overall Influence

Catherine Louise Day is a New Zealand biochemist. She is currently a professor and was the head of the biochemistry department at the University of Otago. Career After a BSc at Massey University, Day completed a PhD entitled Expression and characterisation of the n-terminal half of human lactoferrin in 1993, also at Massey, before moving to the University of Otago where she rose to professor and head of department.

#41589

Thio Li-ann

#41602

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Thio Li-ann is a Singaporean law professor at the National University of Singapore. She was educated at the University of Oxford, Harvard Law School and the University of Cambridge. In January 2007, she was appointed a Nominated Member of Parliament in Singapore's 11th Parliament.

#41590

Fawziyya Abu Khalid

#41603

Overall Influence

1955 - Present (71 years)

Fawziyya Abu Khalid is a Saudi Arabian poet, essayist, sociologist, and professor. Her poetry is noted for its prominent political motifs and focus on women's ability to attain education and freedom. Her literary reputation was established by the publication of her first poetry collection, Until When Will They Abduct You on Your Wedding Night? . She went on to publish two other poetry collections, entitled the Secret Readings in the History of Arab Silence and Mirage Water .

#41591

Pauline Turner Strong

#41604

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Pauline Turner Strong is an American anthropologist specializing in literary, historical, ethnographic, media, and popular representations of Native Americans. Theoretically her work has considered colonial and postcolonial representation, identity and alterity, and hybridity. She has also researched intercultural captivity narratives, intercultural adoption practices, and the appropriation of Native American symbols and practices in U.S. sports and youth organizations.

#41592

Emilia Clarke

#41605

Overall Influence

1986 - Present (40 years)

Emilia Isobel Euphemia Rose Clarke is a British actress. She is best known for her portrayal of Daenerys Targaryen in the HBO fantasy series Game of Thrones , for which she received nominations for four Primetime Emmy Awards.

#41593

Andrzej Eliasz

#41606

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Andrzej Eliasz is a Polish psychologist, professor, and former rector of the SWPS University of Humanities and Social Sciences . Chairman of the board of trustees. Eliasz was born in 1941. He earned his first undergraduate degree from Warsaw University. In 1972 he obtained a doctoral degree. In 1990 he was awarded the title of professor of humanities. Eliasz worked at the Central Institute for Labor Protection and the Institute of Psychology of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

#41595

Xiran Jay Zhao

#41608

Overall Influence

1997 - Present (29 years)

Xiran Jay Zhao is a Canadian author, Internet personality, and cosplayer. Their debut novel, Iron Widow, became a 1 New York Times Best Seller and won the 2021 BSFA Award for Best Book for Younger Readers.

#41596

Louise Chappell

#41609

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Louise A. Chappell is an Australian political scientist. She is a Scientia Professor at the University of New South Wales, where she is also the director of the Australian Human Rights Institute. She studies gender and politics, the politics of the International Criminal Court, and the politics of Australia in comparative perspective.

#41597

Günther Dollinger

#41610

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (66 years)

Günther Dollinger is a German physicist and professor at the Bundeswehr University Munich. Life Dollinger completed his doctoral studies in physics at the Technical University of Munich . He is currently head of the Institute of Applied Physics and Measurement Technology within the Faculty of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Bundeswehr University Munich. He conducts research in different interdisciplinary and interinstitutional research projects. He is a member of the Munich Centre for Advanced Photonics, an inter-university excellence cluster, funded by the German government, based at Univer...

#41598

Anne Plant

#41611

Overall Influence

Anne L. Plant is an American biochemist. She is a Fellow at the National Institute of Standards and Technology where she was previously chief of the biosystems and biomaterials division. Plant investigates measurements and models of cell populations. She is a recipient of the United States Department of Commerce's Bronze and Silver Medals. Plant is a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

#41599

Robyn Rodriguez

Robyn Rodriguez

#41612

Overall Influence

Robyn Magalit Rodriguez is an Filipina American professor, author, and activist. She is currently a professor and chair of the Department of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Davis. In 2018, Rodriguez founded the Bulosan Center for Filipino Studies; which is noted to be the first Filipino Studies center in the United States. She is a former associate professor at Rutgers.

#41600

Philippe Apeloig

Philippe Apeloig

#41613

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

Philippe Apeloig is a French graphic designer and typographer born in Paris in 1962. Biography Philippe Apeloig studied at the École supérieure des arts appliqués Duperré, then at the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs. It was during two internships undertaken in 1983 and 1985, at Wim Crouwel's Total Design in Amsterdam, that he became particularly interested in typography.

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