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

#41951

Garry Nolan

#41964

Overall Influence

Garry P. Nolan is an American immunologist, academic, inventor, and business executive. He holds the Rachford and Carlota A. Harris Professor Endowed Chair in the Department of Pathology at Stanford University School of Medicine. Nolan founded biotechnology companies, wrote numerous medical research papers, and has been active in ufology.

#41952

Bobby Roode

#41965

Overall Influence

1977 - Present (49 years)

Robert "Bobby" Francis Roode Jr. is a Canadian professional wrestler. He is currently signed to WWE, where he is now a producer. Roode is known for his 12-year tenure for Total Nonstop Action Wrestling . After debuting for TNA as part of Team Canada in 2004, he won the NWA World Tag Team Championship with Eric Young. Following the team's breakup, embarked on a singles run before forming a tag team with James Storm as Beer Money, Inc. Together with Storm, he is a six-time TNA World Tag Team Champion and they are the longest reigning champions in TNA history. Roode eventually became a two-time...

#41953

Nigel Kneale

#41966

Overall Influence

1922 - 2006 (84 years)

Thomas Nigel Kneale was a Manx screenwriter who wrote professionally for more than 50 years, was a winner of the Somerset Maugham Award, and was twice nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best British Screenplay.

#41954

Arjen Hoekstra

#41967

Overall Influence

1967 - 2019 (52 years)

Arjen Hoekstra was a professor at the University of Twente who pioneered the concept of the water footprint - a way of measuring the extent of water consumption. His work drew attention to the hidden water use associated with a range of activities, and continues to have a profound effect both on scholarship and on environmental policy and activism. He strongly supported open source science, and all his articles were published under a Creative Commons License.

#41955

Bernard Lagat

#41968

Overall Influence

1974 - Present (52 years)

Bernard Kipchirchir Lagat is a Kenyan-American middle and long-distance runner. Lagat was born in Kapsabet, Kenya. Prior to his change of domicile to the US, Lagat had an extensive competitive career representing his native country.

#41956

Daniel L. Stein

#41969

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (73 years)

Daniel L. Stein is an American physicist and Professor of Physics and Mathematics at New York University. From 2006 to 2012 he served as the NYU Dean of Science. He has contributed to a wide range of scientific fields. His early research covered diverse topics, including theoretical work on protein biophysics, biological evolution, amorphous semiconductors, quantum liquids, topology of order parameter spaces, liquid crystals, neutron stars, and the interface between particle physics and cosmology. His primary focus, however, has been on quenched randomness in condensed matter and on stochastic processes in both irreversible and extended systems.

#41957

Ramush Haradinaj

#41970

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Ramush Haradinaj is a Kosovo Albanian politician, leader of the AAK party, and the third prime minister of Kosovo. He is a former officer and leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army , and previously served as Prime Minister of Kosovo between 2004 and 2005.

#41958

Thomas Giegerich

#41971

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (67 years)

Thomas Giegerich is a German jurist. He is professor for European law, international law and public law at Saarland University and director of the Europa-Institut, Saarbrücken. Biography Thomas Giegerich studied law at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz from 1978 until 1984. He went to the University of Virginia on a Fulbright scholarship from 1984 to 1985, where he graduated as Master of Laws He returned to Mainz for his "Referendariat" in 1985, working also as an assistant to Eckart Klein, at the Institute for International and European Law. In the summer semester of 1987 he studied ...

#41959

David Arnold

#41972

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (64 years)

David Arnold is a British film composer whose credits include scoring five James Bond films, as well as Stargate , Independence Day , Godzilla and the television series Little Britain and Sherlock. For Independence Day, he received a Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Composition Written for a Motion Picture or for Television, and for Sherlock, he and co-composer Michael Price won a Creative Arts Emmy for the score of "His Last Vow", the final episode in the third series. Arnold scored the BBC / Amazon Prime series Good Omens adapted by Neil Gaiman from his book Good Omens, written with Terry Pratchett.

#41960

Richard Lazarus

#41973

Overall Influence

Richard J. Lazarus is the Charles Stebbins Fairchild Professor of Law at the Harvard Law School. Early life and education Lazarus graduated from University High School in Urbana, Illinois. He holds a B.S. in chemistry and a B.A. in economics from the University of Illinois and a J.D. from Harvard Law School . Prior to his arrival at Georgetown in 1996, Lazarus taught at the Law School at Washington University in St. Louis and the Indiana University Maurer School of Law and worked in the Solicitor General's Office and the Land and Natural Resources Division of the United States Department ...

#41961

Joaquín Sabina

#41974

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Joaquín Ramón Martínez Sabina is a Spanish musician, singer, composer, and poet. His songs usually treat about love, heartbreaks and society with a large usage of literary figures similarly to the baroque-literature style.

#41962

Robert Tycko

#41975

Overall Influence

Robert Tycko is an American biophysicist whose research primarily involves solid state NMR, including the development of new methods and applications to various areas of physics, chemistry, and biology. He is a member of the Laboratory of Chemical Physics in the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, USA. He was formerly a member of the Physical Chemistry Research and Materials Chemistry Research departments of AT&T Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey. His work has contributed to our understanding of geome...

#41963

Tomas Andres

#41976

Overall Influence

Tomas Quintin Donato Andres is a Filipino intercultural consultant, counselor, and pioneer of the Philippine-based management and training system known as Management by Filipino Values. He is also the initiator of the internationally based management and training system known as Management by Humor. Apart from being a professor at the Ateneo de Manila University, he is also the manager and president of the Values and Technologies Management Centre. His Understanding Filipino Values is a book that relates the Filipino value system to the management situation in the Philippines, in order to p...

#41964

Suzanne Bennett Johnson

#41977

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (78 years)

Suzanne Bennett Johnson is an American psychologist and a past president of the American Psychological Association . Biography Johnson earned an undergraduate psychology degree from Cornell University in 1970. She received a Ph.D. from Stony Brook University in 1974. Johnson was a fellow of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation from 2001 to 2002 along with Hillary Clinton.

#41965

Brian Griese

#41978

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (51 years)

Brian David Griese is an American football coach and former quarterback who is the quarterbacks coach for the San Francisco 49ers of the National Football League . He was drafted by the Denver Broncos in the third round of the 1998 NFL Draft. He played high school football at Christopher Columbus High School and later college football at Michigan.

#41966

Eric Jones

#41979

Overall Influence

Eric Jones is a Welsh solo climber, skydiver and BASE jumper. He is best known for the first British solo ascent of the north face of the Eiger in 1981, and for his climbs on the Matterhorn and South Col on Mount Everest. In 1986, he became the first person to BASE jump from the Eiger.

#41967

Robert Weissberg

#41980

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

Robert Weissberg was an American political scientist and writer. He was a professor of political science at the University of Illinois and was the author of twelve books on politics and pedagogy. He published numerous scientific papers in leading journals in political science. Weissberg has also written for magazines such as Forbes, Society, and The Weekly Standard. He was also a speaker at American Renaissance Magazine conferences where he was outspoken about his belief in the average mental differences between racial populations.

#41968

John Pollard

#41981

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (85 years)

John M. Pollard is a British mathematician who has invented algorithms for the factorization of large numbers and for the calculation of discrete logarithms. His factorization algorithms include the rho, p − 1, and the first version of the special number field sieve, which has since been improved by others.

#41969

Sylvaine Neveu

#41982

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Sylvaine Neveu, born on 6 January 1968, is a French chemist and scientific director of the Solvay group. She received an Irène-Joliot-Curie Prize in 2016. Life and work Born in Rennes, France, Neveu attended Châteaubriand high school before enrolling at the ParisTech School of Chemistry. She went on to earn her doctorate in process engineering from the École Nationale Supérieure des mines in Paris and joined the Belgian company Solvay group in 1994. There, she is works at the Research and Innovation organization in charge of the development of products and processes for the Group’s Global Busi...

#41970

Grace Jantzen

#41983

Overall Influence

1948 - 2006 (58 years)

Grace Marion Jantzen was a Canadian feminist philosopher and theologian. She was professor of religion, culture and gender at Manchester University from 1996 until her death from cancer at the age of 57.

#41971

Jonathan Palmer

Jonathan Palmer

#41984

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (70 years)

Jonathan Charles Palmer is a British businessman and former Formula One racing driver. Before opting for a career in motor racing, Palmer trained as a physician at London's Guy's Hospital. He also worked as a junior physician at Cuckfield and Brighton hospitals.

#41972

Muchkund Dubey

#41985

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Prof. Muchkund Dubey is a Former Ambassador and Former Indian Foreign Secretary, the administrative head of the Indian Foreign Service, Government of India. Career He is also President of Council for Social Development , and Chairman of the Asian Development Research Institute, Patna. He is also a Professor in International Relations at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi and Professor Emeritus at the Foreign Service Institute.

#41973

Lutz Gissmann

#41986

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (77 years)

Lutz Gissmann is a German virologist and was head of the division Genome Modifications and Carcinogenesis at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg until his retirement in 2015. Lutz Gissmann is known for his seminal research in the field of human papillomaviruses and their causal association with human cancer, especially cervical cancer. In his early work, he demonstrated genetic heterogeneity among HPV isolates leading the way to the now well-established concept of distinct HPV types of which some are associated with specific benign or malignant disease. In the early 1980s in th...

#41974

David Hinkley

#41987

Overall Influence

1945 - 2019 (74 years)

David Victor Hinkley was a statistician known for his research in statistical models and inference and for his graduate-level books. Early life David Victor Hinkley was born on 10 September 1944 in Kent, England. He studied mathematics and statistics at the University of Birmingham. He earned a PhD from the University of London in 1969 under the supervision of David R. Cox.

#41975

Steven M. LaValle

#41988

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (58 years)

Steven M. LaValle is an American computer scientist, and a professor in the Faculty of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering at the University of Oulu. He was also an early founder and head scientist of Oculus VR until it was acquired by Facebook in 2014. He is best known for his work on rapidly exploring random trees , the Oculus Rift, and his book, Planning Algorithms, one of the most highly cited texts in the field.

#41976

John Heuser

#41989

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (84 years)

John E. Heuser is an American Professor of Biophysics in the department of Cell Biology and Physiology at the Washington University School of Medicine as well as a Professor at the Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences at Kyoto University.

#41977

Rami Malek

#41990

Overall Influence

1981 - Present (45 years)

Rami Said Malek is an American actor. He is known for portraying computer hacker Elliot Alderson in the USA Network television series Mr. Robot , for which he received the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, and as Queen lead singer Freddie Mercury in the biographical film Bohemian Rhapsody , for which he won numerous accolades, including the Academy Award for Best Actor, becoming the first actor of Egyptian heritage to win in that category. Time magazine named Malek one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2019.

#41978

Joe Nieuwendyk

#41991

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (60 years)

Joseph Nieuwendyk is a Canadian former National Hockey League player. He was a second round selection of the Calgary Flames, 27th overall, at the 1985 NHL Entry Draft and played 20 seasons for the Flames, Dallas Stars, New Jersey Devils, Toronto Maple Leafs, and Florida Panthers. He is one of only 11 players in NHL's history to win the Stanley Cup with three or more different teams, winning titles with Calgary in 1989, Dallas in 1999 and New Jersey in 2003. A two-time Olympian, Nieuwendyk won a gold medal with Team Canada at the 2002 winter games. He was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2011 and his uniform number 25 was honoured by the Flames in 2014.

#41979

Johanna Brenner

#41992

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (83 years)

Johanna Brenner is an American feminist and sociologist whose writing and thought is in the socialist-feminist vein. A graduate of Reed College and the University of California, Los Angeles , she spent four years as a telephone installation technician worker in the 1970s. In 1981 she began teaching in the sociology department at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon, where she served from 1982 to 2005 as coordinator of its women's studies program. She is now emeritus professor.

#41980

Brian Hemphill

#41993

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (57 years)

Brian O. Hemphill is an American academic administrator, researcher, author and the current president of Old Dominion University, his third university presidency in a decade. Before taking the role at ODU, Hemphill was president of Radford University and West Virginia State University. On February 12, 2021, Dr. Hemphill was announced as the 9th president of Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. He had become president of West Virginia State University in 2012 and of Radford in 2016. Before the West Virginia position, he had been vice president for student affairs and enrollment manage...

#41981

Eileen Atkins

#41994

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (92 years)

Dame Eileen June Atkins, is an English actress and occasional screenwriter. She has worked in the theatre, film, and television consistently since 1953. In 2008, she won the BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress and the Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or Movie for Cranford. She is also a three-time Olivier Award winner, winning Best Supporting Performance in 1988 and Best Actress for The Unexpected Man and Honour . She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1990 and Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2001.

#41982

Dejan Bodiroga

#41995

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Dejan Bodiroga is a Serbian basketball executive and former professional player, who is currently the President of EuroLeague Basketball. In 1998 and 2002, he received the Golden Badge award for the best athlete of Yugoslavia, and the Yugoslav Olympic Committee also declared him the Sportsman of the Year. He was named to the FIBA All-Time EuroStars Team in 2007. HoopsHype named Bodiroga one of the 75 Greatest International Players Ever in 2021. He was inducted into the Greek Basket League Hall of Fame in 2022.

#41983

Graham Parker

#41996

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (76 years)

Graham Thomas Parker is an English singer-songwriter, who is best known as the lead singer of the British band Graham Parker & the Rumour. Life and career Early career Parker was born in Hackney, East London, in 1950. He was a pupil at Chobham Secondary Modern School in Surrey. After the success of the Beatles, Parker and some other 12/13-year-olds formed the Deepcut Three, soon renamed the Black Rockers. None of the members actually learned to play their instruments, however, and were merely dress-up bands, adopting Beatle haircuts, black jeans and polo neck sweaters. By the time Parker wa...

#41984

Alexei A. Maradudin

#41997

Overall Influence

#41985

Sheri Reynolds

#41998

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (59 years)

Sheri Reynolds is an author of contemporary Southern fiction. She was born and raised in rural South Carolina and lives on Virginia's eastern shore. She graduated from Conway High School in 1985, Davidson College in 1989, and Virginia Commonwealth University in 1992.

#41986

Isabel Pérez Farfante

#41999

Overall Influence

1916 - 2009 (93 years)

Isabel Pérez Farfante was a Cuban-born carcinologist. She was the first Cuban woman to receive her Ph.D. from an Ivy League school. She returned to Cuba from the United States only to be blacklisted by Fidel Castro's government. She and her family escaped Cuba, and she became one of the world's foremost zoologists studying prawns. She discovered large populations of shrimp off the coast of Cuba and published one of the most noted books on shrimps: "Penaeoid and Sergestoid Shrimps and Prawns of the World. Keys and Diagnoses for the Families and Genera."

#41987

C. Stephen Foster

#42000

Overall Influence

Charles Stephen Foster is an American ophthalmologist known for his research and treatment of ocular inflammatory disease with immunomodulatory therapy. In addition, Foster is the author of approximately 1,000 papers and 14 textbooks. His focus tends to be dedicated to the advancement of ophthalmology. Foster established the Ocular Immunology and Uveitis Foundation to support relevant research. He is currently is a mentor and part-time professor of ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School.

#41988

Quentin Lauer

#42001

Overall Influence

1917 - 1997 (80 years)

Quentin Lauer, S.J. was an American Jesuit priest, philosopher and Hegel scholar. Lauer’s academic work helped introduce Hegel's thought to the American philosophical community. He was President of the American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division from 1985–1986, and a President of the Hegel Society of America. Quentin Lauer was also a scholar of Edmund Husserl. He was a professor of philosophy at Fordham University from 1954 to 1990. Important works by Lauer which helped disseminate the ideas of Hegel and Husserl in the United States include: A Reading of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spi...

#41989

Weitao Yang

#42002

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (65 years)

Weitao Yang is a Chinese-born American chemist who is the Philip Handler Professor of Chemistry at Duke University. His main contributions to chemistry include density functional theory development, and its applications to chemistry.

#41990

Richard Solomon

#42003

Overall Influence

1918 - 1995 (77 years)

Richard Lester Solomon was a psychologist well known for his work with in comparative psychology, as well as his opponent-process theory of emotion. Solomon attended Brown University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in 1940, a master's degree in 1942, and a doctorate in 1947.

#41991

Jenny Zhang

#42004

Overall Influence

1983 - Present (43 years)

Jenny Zhang is an American writer, poet, and prolific essayist based in Brooklyn, New York. One focus of her work is on the Chinese American immigrant identity and experience in the United States. She has published a collection of poetry called Dear Jenny, We Are All Find and a non-fiction chapbook called Hags. From 2011 to 2014, Zhang wrote extensively for Rookie. Additionally, Zhang has worked as a freelance essayist for other publications. In August 2017, Zhang's short story collection, Sour Heart, was the first acquisition by Lena Dunham's Lenny imprint, Lenny Books, via Random House.

#41992

Marián Hossa

#42005

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (47 years)

Marián Hossa is a Slovak former professional ice hockey right winger. Hossa was drafted by the Ottawa Senators in the first round, 12th overall, of the 1997 NHL Entry Draft. After spending his first seven NHL seasons with the Senators, he played for the Atlanta Thrashers, Pittsburgh Penguins, Detroit Red Wings, and Chicago Blackhawks. Over the course of his career, he made five NHL All-Star Game appearances and played in three consecutive Stanley Cup Finals with three different teams, finally winning the Stanley Cup in 2009–10 with Chicago. He won two additional Stanley Cup championships with Chicago during the 2012–13 and 2014–15 seasonss.

#41993

Carolina Sanín

#42006

Overall Influence

1973 - Present (53 years)

Carolina Sanín Paz is a Colombian writer who also holds Spanish citizenship. She has published novels, essays, short stories, and children's books. She has been a professor at SUNY Purchase in the United States, and at University of Los Andes and National University of Colombia in Colombia. She has also worked as a translator, as a television host, and as a film actress. She has contributed periodical columns to several Colombian and international newspapers and magazines.

#41994

Donald R. Yennie

#42007

Overall Influence

1924 - 1993 (69 years)

Donald Robert Yennie was an American theoretical physicist and professor at Cornell University. He is known for his work on renormalization in Quantum electrodynamics and for early work on the structure of nucleons.

#41995

Mario Puzo

#42008

Overall Influence

1920 - 1999 (79 years)

Mario Francis Puzo was an American author and screenwriter. He wrote crime novels about the Italian-American Mafia and Sicilian Mafia, most notably The Godfather , which he later co-adapted into a film trilogy directed by Francis Ford Coppola. He received the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for the first film in 1972 and for Part II in 1974. Puzo also wrote the original screenplay for the 1978 Superman film and its 1980 sequel. His final novel, The Family, was released posthumously in 2001.

#41996

Paul J. Olscamp

#42009

Overall Influence

1937 - 2014 (77 years)

Paul J. Olscamp was a Canadian-American academic and university administrator, born in Montreal, Quebec. While attending the University of Western Ontario, Olscamp was a member of the Delta Upsilon fraternity. He received his Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees in 1958 and 1960, respectively. He received his doctorate in philosophy from the University of Rochester in 1962, the first such degree awarded there. His continuing love of the subject was evident during his time at Bowling Green State University because he taught a philosophy course almost every semester, despite managing all his duties as president.

#41997

Waldemar Świerzy

#42010

Overall Influence

1931 - 2013 (82 years)

Waldemar Świerzy was a Polish artist. Life Born in Katowice, Poland, he graduated from the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts in 1952. He was subsequently Professor in the University of Fine Arts in Poznań from 1965 and Professor in the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw from 1994.

#41998

Patrick Marleau

Patrick Marleau

#42011

Overall Influence

1979 - Present (47 years)

Patrick Denis Marleau is a Canadian former professional ice hockey forward. With 1,779 NHL games played, he is the all-time leader in games played in league history. He passed the record previously held by Gordie Howe in his 1,768th game on April 19, 2021. Marleau scored 1,197 points during his entire NHL career. The San Jose Sharks drafted Marleau second overall in the 1997 NHL Entry Draft, and Marleau spent the vast majority of his NHL career with the franchise, becoming its all-time leader in goals, even strength goals, power play goals, points, shots, and games played. Marleau is also th...

#41999

John Read

#42012

Overall Influence

John Read is a psychologist and mental health researcher from England. He is professor of clinical psychology in the University of East London's School of Psychology. Read was formerly a clinical psychologist in the Department of Psychology at the University of Auckland. His research interests include: attitudes towards 'mental illness', psycho-social causes of psychosis, and the role of the pharmaceutical industry in psychology.

#42000

Monty Hall

#42013

Overall Influence

1921 - 2017 (96 years)

Monty Hall was a Canadian radio and television show host who moved to the United States in 1955 to pursue a career in broadcasting. After working as a radio newsreader and sportscaster, Hall returned to television in the U.S., this time in game shows. Starting in 1963, he was best known as the game show host and producer of Let's Make a Deal. He had a conundrum with game theory and psychology aspects named after him: the Monty Hall problem. Behind the scenes, Hall also carried on an active life of philanthropy.

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