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

#1

John Ostrom

#3977

Overall Influence

1928 - 2005 (77 years)

John Harold Ostrom was an American paleontologist who revolutionized the modern understanding of dinosaurs. Ostrom's work inspired what his pupil Robert T. Bakker has termed a "dinosaur renaissance".

#2

Thomas Trautmann

#7260

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Thomas Roger Trautmann is an American historian, cultural anthropologist, and Professor Emeritus of History and Anthropology at the University of Michigan. He is considered a leading expert on the Arthashastra, the ancient Hindu text on statecraft, economic policy, and military strategy, written in Sanskrit. Trautmann has mentored many students during his tenure at the University of Michigan. His studies focus on ancient India, the history of anthropology, and other related subjects. Trautmann's work in Indology has been credited with illuminating the underlying economic philosophy that governed ancient Indian kinship.

#3

William Wohlforth

William Wohlforth

#8112

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

William Curti Wohlforth is the Daniel Webster Professor of Government in the Dartmouth College Department of Government, of which he was chair for three academic years . Wohlforth was Editor-in-chief of Security Studies from 2008 to 2011. He is linked to the Neoclassical realism school and known for his work on American unipolarity.

#4

W. Willard Wirtz

#9485

Overall Influence

1912 - 2010 (98 years)

William Willard Wirtz was a U.S. administrator, cabinet officer, attorney, and law professor. He served as the Secretary of Labor between 1962 and 1969 under the administrations of Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Wirtz was the last living member of Kennedy's cabinet.

#5

Steven Brams

#11814

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Steven J. Brams is an American game theorist and political scientist at the New York University Department of Politics. Brams is best known for using the techniques of game theory, public choice theory, and social choice theory to analyze voting systems and fair division. He is one of the independent discoverers of approval voting, as well as extensions of approval voting to multiple-winner elections to give proportional representation of different interests.

#6

Greg Stafford

#12159

Overall Influence

1948 - 2018 (70 years)

Francis Gregory Stafford , usually known as Greg Stafford, was an American game designer, publisher, and practitioner of shamanism. Stafford is most famous as the creator of the fantasy world of Glorantha, but he was also a prolific games designer. He was designer of Pendragon, he was co-designer of the RuneQuest, Ghostbusters, Prince Valiant and HeroQuest role-playing systems, founder of the role-playing game companies Chaosium and Issaries, designer of the White Bear and Red Moon, Nomad Gods, King Arthur's Knights and Elric board games, and co-designer of the King of Dragon Pass computer gam...

#7

Catherine Wessinger

#12239

Overall Influence

Catherine Wessinger is an American religion scholar. She is the Rev. H. James Yamauchi, S.J. Professor of the History of Religions at Loyola University New Orleans where she teaches religious studies with a main research focus on millennialism, new religions, women and religion, and religions of India. Wessinger is co-general editor of Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions. She served as a consultant to federal law enforcement during the Montana Freemen standoff and has been cited for her expertise concerning the Branch Davidians and other apocalyptic groups. She is ...

#8

James Arness

#28758

Overall Influence

1923 - 2011 (88 years)

James Arness was an American actor, best known for portraying Marshal Matt Dillon for 20 years in the series Gunsmoke. Arness has the distinction of having played the role of Dillon in five decades: 1955 to 1975 in the weekly series, then in Gunsmoke: Return to Dodge and four more made-for-television Gunsmoke films in the 1990s. In Europe, Arness reached cult status for his role as Zeb Macahan in the Western series How the West Was Won. He was the older brother of actor Peter Graves.

#9

Janine P. Geske

#30894

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Janine P. Geske is an American jurist and law professor who served as a justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court from 1993 to 1998 and as interim Milwaukee County Executive in 2002. Life and career Born in Port Washington, Wisconsin, Geske was raised in the nearby community of Cedarburg. She graduated from Cedarburg High School in 1967 and received her bachelor's and master's degrees from Beloit College in 1971 and 1972, respectively. Geske earned her J.D. degree from the Marquette University Law School in 1975.

#10

Clarence Ellis

#31007

Overall Influence

1943 - 2014 (71 years)

Clarence "Skip" Ellis was an American computer scientist, and Emeritus Professor of Computer Science and Cognitive Science at the University of Colorado at Boulder. While at the CU-Boulder, he was the director of the Collaboration Technology Research Group and a member of the Institute of Cognitive Science. Ellis was the first Black Person to earn a Ph.D. in Computer Science , and the first Black Person to be elected a Fellow of the ACM . Ellis was a pioneer in Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Groupware. He and his team at Xerox PARC created OfficeTalk, one of the first groupware systems.

#11

Christina Kramer

#36762

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Christina Elizabeth Kramer is Professor of Slavic and Balkan languages and linguistics at the University of Toronto and Chair of the university's Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures which is part of the Faculty of Arts and Science.

#12

Carolyn Heinrich

#39895

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (57 years)

Carolyn J. Heinrich is the Patricia and Rodes Hart Professor of Public Policy, Education and Economics at Vanderbilt University. Career Prior to her appointment at Vanderbilt University, she was the Sid Richardson Professor of Public Affairs, affiliated Professor of Economics, and Director of the Center for Health and Social Policy at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin. She continues as a Research Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. She has also held professorships at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she served as the Director of the La Follette School of Public Affairs, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

#13

Luke Somers

#44235

Overall Influence

1981 - 2014 (33 years)

Luke Daniel Somers was a British-born American photojournalist who had been held hostage by the militant Islamist group al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen. He was a dual citizen of the United Kingdom and the United States. He traveled to Egypt before settling in Yemen.

#14

Troy Denning

#46557

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (66 years)

Troy Denning is an American fantasy and science fiction author and game designer who has written more than two dozen novels. Background Denning grew up in the mountain town of Idaho Springs, Colorado. An avid reader of science fiction and fantasy, he began writing himself at the age of fourteen in 80-page spiral-bound notebooks, and began to collect the usual quantity of rejection slips. Around his eighteenth birthday, he received a rejection slip from editor Ben Bova, but one with a signature and a handwritten note thanking him for the submission. Heartened, Denning continued to write as he a...

#15

Courtney Lyder

#52971

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Courtney Harvey Lyder is a Trinidadian-American nurse and educator who is recognized internationally for his work in the field of gerontology. Lyder served as dean of the UCLA School of Nursing from 2008 till 2015.

#16

Robben Wright Fleming

#62127

Overall Influence

1916 - 2010 (94 years)

Robben Wright Fleming , also known in his youth as Robben Wheeler Fleming, was an American lawyer, professor, and academic administrator. He was president of the University of Michigan from 1968 to 1979—and interim president again in 1988—and established a reputation for patience and willingness to engage in dialogue with students during the frequent campus protests of that era. He has been called "one of the truly great presidents of the University of Michigan".

#17

Graham Foust

#67743

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Graham W. Foust is an American poet and currently is an associate professor at the University of Denver. Early life and education Foust was born in Knoxville, Tennessee and grew up in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. He has a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing from Beloit College, a Master of Fine Arts from George Mason University, and a Ph.D. from the State University of New York-Buffalo.

#18

Anne Friedberg

#73037

Overall Influence

1952 - 2009 (57 years)

Anne Friedberg was an American author, historian and theorist of modern media culture, chair of the Critical Studies Division in the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California and President-elect of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.

#19

H. Scott Bierman

#79729

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Harold Scott Bierman is an economist, author, and President of Beloit College in Beloit, Wisconsin. Bierman graduated from Bates College in Maine in 1977 with a B.A. in mathematics and economics and then received a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Virginia. While serving as a professor at Carleton College in Minnesota for 27 years, he also served as academic dean, chair of the economics department, and faculty president. Bierman has authored several books and written extensively on a wide range of topics, particularly Game Theory, public sector, experimental economics and industrial organization.

#20

Brooks Haxton

#81596

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Brooks Haxton is an American poet and translator. His publications include nine books of original poems and four books of translations from the German, the French, and ancient Greek. In 2014 he published Fading Hearts on the River, a book of nonfiction about his son's professional poker career.

#21

Joe Davis

#82757

Overall Influence

1987 - Present (37 years)

Joseph Daniel Davis is an American television sportscaster who serves as the play-by-play broadcast announcer for Los Angeles Dodgers telecasts on Spectrum SportsNet LA. He also calls national MLB, NFL, and college basketball telecasts for Fox Sports, and has broadcast other pro and college sports for various teams and networks during his career. In addition, he is the main play-by-play broadcaster for the annual World Series and MLB All-Star Game on Fox.

#22

Roger Harold Hull

#87608

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Roger Harold Hull is the founder, chairman, and president of the Help Yourself Win Foundation. The foundation is the result of the consolidation of the Help Yourself and Schenectady-Win foundations. Prior to creating the Help Yourself Foundation in 2005, he served for nine years as the president of Beloit College and fifteen years as President of Union College . In addition, Hull was founder and president of the Schenectady-Win Foundation. Hull was also a founder and is president of Avon Associates, a not-for-profit educational consulting firm.

#23

Daphne Gail Fautin

#88088

Overall Influence

1946 - 2021 (75 years)

Daphne Gail Fautin was an American professor of invertebrate zoology at the University of Kansas, specializing in sea anemones and symbiosis. She is world-renowned for her extensive work studying and classifying sea anemones and related species. A large sea anemone-like cnidarian species has been named in her honor, originally called Boloceroides daphneae, but recently renamed to Relicanthus daphneae, after it was discovered to belong to a previously unknown cnidarian order. Fautin has published numerous scientific articles and texts—including co-authoring Encyclopædia Britannica's entry on cnidarians—and her publications have been widely cited by other researchers in the field.

#24

Justine Siegal

#88403

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (49 years)

Justine Siegal is an American baseball coach, sports educator and the founder of Baseball For All. In 2009, she became the first female coach of a professional men's baseball team, when she worked for the Brockton Rox, in the independent Canadian American Association of Professional Baseball. In 2011, she became the first woman to throw batting practice to an MLB team, the Cleveland Indians during spring training. In 2015, hired by the Oakland Athletics for a two-week coaching stint in their instructional league in Arizona, she became the first female coach employed by an MLB team. She has also thrown batting practice to the Tampa Bay Rays, St.

#25

Stephen Glosecki

#92305

Overall Influence

1952 - 2007 (55 years)

Stephen O. Glosecki was a scholar of Old English language and literature. Glosecki was raised in Springfield, Illinois, and educated at Sacred Heart-Griffin High School. He received his undergraduate degree from Beloit College, and his Master's and Ph.D. degrees from University of California, Davis. A professor of Old English at University of Alabama at Birmingham, he was the author of books and articles on Old English literature, particularly on shamanism and folklore, and was notable for his contributions to the anthropological study of early Germanic literature. He died of cancer in 2007, aged 55.

#26

Emma Bull

#96104

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Emma Bull is an American science fiction and fantasy author. Her novels include the Hugo- and Nebula-nominated Bone Dance and the urban fantasy War for the Oaks. She is also known for a series of anthologies set in Liavek, a shared universe that she created with her husband, Will Shetterly. As a singer, songwriter, and guitarist, she has been a member of the Minneapolis-based folk/rock bands Cats Laughing and The Flash Girls.

#27

Aaron Barlow

#96112

Overall Influence

1951 - Present (73 years)

Aaron Barlow was a Cultural Studies scholar and a Professor of English at New York City College of Technology of the City University of New York. Background Barlow was born in Durham, North Carolina. He earned his B.A. at Beloit College and his M.A. and Ph.D. at The University of Iowa with a dissertation on Philip K. Dick.

#28

John S. Samuel

#101480

Overall Influence

1913 - 2002 (89 years)

John S. Samuel was a major general in the United States Air Force. Samuel was born in St. Louis, Missouri. He attended Beloit College from 1932 to 1935. Military career Samuel graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1939. During World War II he served with the 391st Bombardment Group and later was given command of the 322d Bombardment Group. Conflicts he took part in include the Invasion of Normandy, the Allied advance from Paris to the Rhine, the Battle of the Bulge, and the Western Allied invasion of Germany. Following the war he became an instructor at the United States Military Academy and later was assigned to The Pentagon.

#29

Gregory Amenoff

#102828

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Gregory Amenoff is an American painter. He is located in the tradition of the early American Modernist painters Georgia O'Keeffe, Charles Burchfield, Milton Avery, Arthur Dove and Marsden Hartley. In the early 80s his work was often associated with a style of painting called organic abstraction and exhibited alongside artists Bill Jensen, Katherine Porter and Terry Winters.

#30

George R. Milner

#117603

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

George R. Milner is an American archaeologist in the Department of Anthropology at The Pennsylvania State University. He has done archaeological research on sites encompassing a range of time periods in Illinois, Missouri, Wisconsin, and Kentucky, and has also worked in Egypt and Saipan . He has worked with prehistoric and historic human skeletal remains from eastern North America, Denmark, and Egypt. By using modern samples of known age from the United States, Switzerland, and Portugal, he has helped refine skeletal age estimation techniques.

#31

Lee Penn

#118674

Overall Influence

R. Lee Penn is an American chemist and the Merck Professor of Chemistry at the University of Minnesota. Their research considers crystal growth, materials and environmental chemistry. Penn is a Fellow of the American Chemical Society. In 2020 Penn was awarded the University of Minnesota George W. Taylor Award for Distinguished Service.

#32

John Sall

#121369

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

John P. Sall is an American billionaire businessman and computer software developer, who co-founded SAS Institute and created the JMP statistical software. Sall grew up in Rockford, Illinois and earned degrees in history, economics and statistics. In 1976, he joined others from North Carolina State University in co-founding SAS Institute, an analytics software company. In the 1980s, Sall and other developers created the JMP statistical software.

#33

John Rapp

#122494

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

John A. Rapp is an American political science professor teaching at Beloit College, USA since 1986. He primarily specialises in "Chinese politics, Communist and post-Communist systems, comparative democracies and electoral systems, and Chinese and comparative political thought."

#34

Lynne Goldstein

#123341

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (71 years)

Lynne Goldstein is an American archaeologist, known for her work in mortuary analysis, Midwestern archaeology, campus archaeology, repatriation policy, and archaeology and social media. She is a professor of anthropology at Michigan State University and was the editor of American Antiquity between 1995 and 2000.

#35

Crawford Gates

#136001

Overall Influence

1921 - 2018 (97 years)

Crawford Marion Gates was an American musician, composer, and conductor known for his contributions to the body of music for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints . Early life and education Gates was born in San Francisco, December 29, 1921, and grew up in Palo Alto, California. He started playing piano at age eight and violin at age nine. In his first year of college at the College of the Pacific and San Jose State, he won a student composition contest sponsored by the Stockton Symphony During his mission for the LDS Church, he directed the Mormon Male Chorus of Philadelphia, a group of eight other missionaries.

#36

Dan Morse

#174678

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Dan Franklin Morse is an archaeologist specializing in the prehistory of the midwestern United States and the central Mississippi Valley, research summarized in a number of books, monographs, and technical articles. He is best known for his 1983 synthesis of the "Archaeology of the Central Mississippi Valley" with Phyllis A. Morse, and for his 1997 volume issued by the Smithsonian Institution Press on "Sloan: A Paleoindian Dalton Cemetery in Arkansas." The Sloan site is the location of the oldest marked cemetery found to date in the Americas. He conducted excavations on a great many other sign...

#37

Tenaya Darlington

#176312

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (53 years)

Tenaya Darlington is an American writer as well as associate professor at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her general fields of professional interest include food writing, fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and journalism. She is the author of six books.

#38

Louis A. Toepfer

#178751

Overall Influence

1930 - 2000 (70 years)

Louis Adelbert Toepfer was the second President of Case Western Reserve University. Toepfer was born in Sheboygan, Wisconsin on August 31, 1919. Toepfer earned a Bachelor of Arts, magna cum laude, from Beloit College in 1940. He married his college sweetheart, Alice Mary Willy, in 1942. During World War II, he served as a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Navy from 1942–1946, primarily on the USS Healy, a destroyer in the Pacific theater. In 1947, he graduated from Harvard Law School. Upon graduation, Toepfer became a member of Harvard Law School's faculty, and served as the school's vice dea...

#39

David Johnson

#178761

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

David Johnson was the Iowa State Senator from the 1st District and served as assistant minority leader. A former Republican and currently independent, he served in the Iowa Senate from 2003 to 2019 and served in the Iowa House of Representatives from 1999 to 2003. He received his B.A. in History from Beloit College.

#40

Raj Fernando

#182814

Overall Influence

1971 - Present (53 years)

Rajiv K. "Raj" Fernando is an American businessman, political fundraiser and donor, and philanthropist. He is the current Chairman and CEO of Workstorm.com and the former CEO of Chopper Trading. Early life and education Fernando was born to CK and Laura Fernando while the two were living in Denmark, after CK completed a Fulbright Scholarship at New York University and Laura completed her studies in classical piano under a Juilliard School professor. He was born the youngest of three children after his two sisters, Netasha and Tanya, and moved to the United States before the age of one.

#41

Thomas Pinney

#184649

Overall Influence

1932 - Present (92 years)

Thomas Pinney is an American English scholar known for his work collecting the letters of Thomas Babington Macaulay and Rudyard Kipling, as well as a wine scholar known for his two-volume history of wine in the U.S. He is an emeritus professor of English at Pomona College in Claremont, California, having previously held the Spalding Professor and William M. Keck Distinguished Service Professor endowed chair and been chair of the department.

#42

James Strong

1833 - 1913 (80 years)

Dr. James Woodward Strong , an American theologian and scholar, was the first president of Carleton College, Minnesota. Despite lifelong illness and injury, Strong was a highly active man throughout his life, juggling multiple professional and personal occupations.

#43

Albert Wurts Whitney

1870 - 1943 (73 years)

Albert Wurts Whitney was a statistician and actuarial scientist, known for his role in the application of Bayes' rule to the development of standards in setting insurance premiums for workmen's compensation. He was a pioneer in accident prevention work and public safety education.

#44

James A. Blaisdell

1867 - 1957 (90 years)

James Arnold Blaisdell was an American minister, theologian, and academic administrator. He was the fourth president of Pomona College and founder and "head fellow" of the Claremont Colleges . Life and career He was born in Beloit, Wisconsin; his father was a philosophy professor at Beloit College. Blaisdell graduated from Beloit College in 1889, and went on to become a minister in Waukesha, Wisconsin for a time, until he went back to Beloit College to be the Chair of the Bible Department, as well as the director of the library, in 1903.

#45

Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin

Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin

1843 - 1928 (85 years)

Thomas Chrowder Chamberlin was an American geologist and educator. In 1893 he founded the Journal of Geology, of which he was editor for many years. Biography Chamberlin was born September 25, 1843, in Mattoon, Illinois. When he was three years old his family moved north to near Beloit, Wisconsin. His father was a Methodist circuit minister and farmer. He attended a preparatory academy before entering Beloit College, where he received a classical education in Greek and Latin, while becoming interested in natural science. While a student at Beloit he directed a church choir and participated in...

#46

Leverett S. Lyon

Leverett S. Lyon

1885 - 1959 (74 years)

Leverett Samuel Lyon was an American economist, lawyer and business executive, known for his works on education, government, marketing, and economic life, and particularly on the National Recovery Administration.

#47

Albert Elijah Dunning

1844 - 1923 (79 years)

Albert Elijah Dunning was an American Congregationalist theologian. Biography He was born in Brookfield, Connecticut and attended the Fort Edward Institute . He graduated from Bryant & Stratton College and Yale University , where he was Phi Beta Kappa and a member of Skull and Bones. Additionally, he graduated from Andover Theological Seminary , and Beloit College with a DD. He was pastor of the Highland Congregational Church in Roxbury, Boston . He was editor of The Congregationalist and Pilgrim Teacher . He was author of Bible Studies ; Congregationalists in America ; and The Making of...

#48

Walter V. Bingham

1880 - 1952 (72 years)

Walter Van Dyke Bingham was an applied and industrial psychologist who made significant contributions to intelligence testing. A pioneer in applied psychology, Bingham got his start in experimental psychology, receiving his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago under James R. Angell. Bingham went from Dartmouth in 1915 to organize the Division of Applied Psychology at the Carnegie Institute of Technology. When war came to the United States, Bingham was recruited by Robert Yerkes as a member of a small group that developed the Army Alpha and Beta tests. During World War I Bingham served as executive secretary of the committee on classification of personnel in the U.S.

#49

Gladys Pitcher

1890 - 1996 (106 years)

Gladys Pitcher was an American music editor, teacher, and composer. Biography Pitcher was born in Belfast, Maine in 1890. She attended high school in Belfast and was considered for the Boston Globe scholarship contest in 1906 and received many votes towards it, including from people who were not from Belfast. She graduated from the New England Conservatory and completed postgraduate work in theory, composition, and cello. Pitcher taught at Beloit College and directed music at schools in Bennington, Vermont and Manchester, New Hampshire. She was the music editor for C.C. Birchard Company in Boston before moving back to Belfast, Maine.

#50

Rollin D. Salisbury

Rollin D. Salisbury

1858 - 1922 (64 years)

Rollin Daniel Salisbury was an American geologist and educator. Biography Salisbury was born at Spring Prairie, Wisconsin, in 1858. He studied at Whitewater State Normal School in Whitewater, Wisconsin, graduating in 1877 after completing the four-year course in just two-and-one-half years. He taught in a village school in Port Washington, Wisconsin, for one year before entering Beloit College as a sophomore in the fall of 1878. At Beloit, he studied geology with T.C. Chamberlin as his professor. After graduating from Beloit in 1881, he spent one year working for the U.S. Geological Survey as Chamberlin's field assistant, during which time he lived in the Chamberlin household.

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