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 …

See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.

Search Influential People

Person Name

School

Gender

Country

Discipline

Subdiscipline

Ranking

List of the most influential people

#1

André Weil

#59

Overall Influence

1906 - 1998 (92 years)

André Weil was a French mathematician, known for his foundational work in number theory and algebraic geometry. He was one of the most influential mathematicians of the twentieth century. His influence is due both to his original contributions to a remarkably broad spectrum of mathematical theories, and to the mark he left on mathematical practice and style, through some of his own works as well as through the Bourbaki group, of which he was one of the principal founders.

#2

Fredric Jameson

Fredric Jameson

#124

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (90 years)

Fredric Jameson is an American literary critic, philosopher and Marxist political theorist. He is best known for his analysis of contemporary cultural trends, particularly his analysis of postmodernity and capitalism. Jameson's best-known books include Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism and The Political Unconscious .

#3

Dave Barry

#2008

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

David McAlister Barry is an American author and columnist who wrote a nationally syndicated humor column for the Miami Herald from 1983 to 2005. He has also written numerous books of humor and parody, as well as comic novels and children's novelss. Barry's honors include the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary and the Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism .

#4

Juan Williams

#2747

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Juan Antonio Williams is an American journalist and political analyst for Fox News Channel. He writes for several newspapers, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal, and has been published in magazines such as The Atlantic and Time. Williams has worked as an editorial writer, an op-ed columnist, a White House correspondent, and a national correspondent. He is a registered Democrat.

#5

Jon Kabat-Zinn

#3038

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (80 years)

Jon Kabat-Zinn is an American professor emeritus of medicine and the creator of the 'Stress Reduction Clinic' and the 'Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society' at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Kabat-Zinn was a student of Zen Buddhist teachers such as Philip Kapleau, Thich Nhat Hanh, and Seung Sahn, and a founding member of Cambridge Zen Center. His practice of hatha yoga, Vipassanā and appreciation of the teachings of Soto Zen and Advaita Vedanta led him to integrate their teachings with scientific findings. He teaches mindfulness, which he says can help people cope with stress, anxiety, pain, and illness.

#6

Jonathan Z. Smith

Jonathan Z. Smith

#4175

Overall Influence

1938 - 2017 (79 years)

Jonathan Zittell Smith , also known as J. Z. Smith, was an American historian of religions. He was based at the University of Chicago for most of his career. His research included work on such diverse topics as Christian origins, the theory of ritual, Hellenistic religions, Māori cults in the 19th century, and the mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana, as well as methodological studies on such common scholarly tools as description, comparison, and interpretation. An essayist, his works include Map Is Not Territory, Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown, To Take Place: Toward Theory in Ritu...

#7

George Marsden

#4774

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (85 years)

George Mish Marsden is an American historian who has written extensively on the interaction between Christianity and American culture, particularly on Christianity in American higher education and on American evangelicalism. He is best known for his award-winning biography of the New England clergyman Jonathan Edwards, a prominent theologian of Colonial America.

#8

Mark Geragos

#4933

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (67 years)

Mark John Geragos is an American criminal defense lawyer and the managing partner of Geragos & Geragos, in Los Angeles. Early life and education Geragos was born in Los Angeles, California, where he attended Flintridge Preparatory School in La Cañada, graduating with honors. He earned his bachelor's degree from Haverford College, in 1979, double-majoring in anthropology and sociology, then his Juris Doctor from Loyola Law School at the Loyola Marymount University in 1982. He was admitted to the State Bar of California in 1983.

#9

Charles Caldwell Ryrie

#5359

Overall Influence

1925 - 2016 (91 years)

Charles Caldwell Ryrie was an American Bible scholar and Christian theologian. He served as professor of systematic theology and dean of doctoral studies at Dallas Theological Seminary and as president and professor at what is now Cairn University. After his retirement from Dallas Theological Seminary he also taught courses for Tyndale Theological Seminary. He is considered one of the most influential American theologians of the 20th century. He was the editor of The Ryrie Study Bible by Moody Publishers, containing more than 10,000 of Ryrie's explanatory notes. First published in 1978, it has sold more than 2 million copies.

#10

Frank Mankiewicz

#6013

Overall Influence

1924 - 2014 (90 years)

Frank Fabian Mankiewicz II was an American journalist, political adviser, president of National Public Radio, and public relations executive. Life and career Frank Mankiewicz was born in New York City and grew up in Beverly Hills, California, the son of Sara and screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, who co-wrote Citizen Kane. His uncle, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, directed such films as All About Eve and Cleopatra. His brother was television writer Don Mankiewicz. They grew up near the Marx Brothers, and Harpo Marx was a presence at Mankiewicz family Passover Seders. "He would pick up the Paschal la...

#11

V. Y. Mudimbe

#6351

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Valentin-Yves Mudimbe is a Congolese philosopher, professor, and author of poems, novels, as well as books and articles on African culture and intellectual history. Mudimbe is Ruth F. DeVarney Professor of Romance Studies and professor of comparative literature at Duke University and maître de conferences at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris.

#12

Andrew B. Newberg

#6691

Overall Influence

1966 - Present (58 years)

Andrew Newberg is an American neuroscientist who is a professor in the Department of Integrative Medicine and Nutritional Sciences and the director of research at the Marcus Institute of Integrative Health at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, previously an adjunct professor of religious studies and a lecturer in psychology in the Biological Basis of Behavior Program at the University of Pennsylvania.

#13

Curtis Callan

#6847

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (82 years)

Curtis Gove Callan Jr. is an American theoretical physicist and the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Physics at Princeton University. He has conducted research in gauge theory, string theory, instantons, black holes, strong interactions, and many other topics. He was awarded the Sakurai Prize in 2000 and the Dirac Medal in 2004.

#14

Marc Melitz

#7345

Overall Influence

1968 - Present (56 years)

Marc J. Melitz is an American economist. He is currently a professor of economics at Harvard University. Melitz has published a number of highly cited articles in the area of international economics and international trade, most notably "The Impact of Trade on Intra-Industry Reallocations and Aggregate Industry Productivity" in Econometrica which explores the effects of international trade on the competition within domestic industries.

#15

David Kertzer

#7611

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

David Israel Kertzer is an American anthropologist, historian, and academic, specializing in the political, demographic, and religious history of Italy. He is the Paul Dupee, Jr. University Professor of Social Science, Professor of Anthropology, and Professor of Italian Studies at Brown University. His book The Pope and Mussolini: The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in Europe won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography. From July 1, 2006, to June 30, 2011, Kertzer served as Provost at Brown.

#16

Arn Tellem

#7698

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (70 years)

Arn Herschel Tellem is an American sports executive who is the vice chairman of the Detroit Pistons of the National Basketball Association . From 1981 to 2015, he was a sports agent best known for his representation of basketball and baseball players. Tellem was vice chairman of the Wasserman Media Group, a global sport and entertainment marketing agency headed by Casey Wasserman. From 2009 to 2010, he wrote a semi-weekly sports column for The Huffington Post. He has also written for Sports Illustrated, the op-ed page of The New York Times, Grantland, Detroit Free Press, The Hollywood Reporte...

#17

Andy Gavin

#7834

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (54 years)

Andrew Scott Gavin is an American video game programmer, entrepreneur, and novelist. Gavin co-founded the video game company Naughty Dog with childhood friend Jason Rubin in 1986, which released games including Crash Bandicoot and Jak and Daxter. Prior to founding Naughty Dog, Gavin worked in LISP at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

#18

Bruce Lincoln

#8036

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (76 years)

Bruce Lincoln is Caroline E. Haskell Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of the History of Religions in the Divinity School of the University of Chicago, where he also holds positions in the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Committee on the Ancient Mediterranean World, Committee on the History of Culture, and in the departments of Anthropology and Classics . Before his arrival at the University of Chicago, Lincoln taught at the University of Minnesota , where he co-founded the Program in Comparative Studies in Discourse and Society.

#19

Philip Rubin

#8200

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Philip E. Rubin is an American cognitive scientist, technologist, and science administrator known for raising the visibility of behavioral and cognitive science, neuroscience, and ethical issues related to science, technology, and medicine, at a national level. His research career is noted for his theoretical contributions and pioneering technological developments, starting in the 1970s, related to speech synthesis and speech production, including articulatory synthesis and sinewave synthesis, and their use in studying complex temporal events, particularly understanding the biological bas...

#20

Chevy Chase

#8887

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (81 years)

Cornelius Crane "Chevy" Chase is an American comedian, actor, and writer. He became the breakout cast member in the first season of Saturday Night Live , where his recurring Weekend Update segment became a staple of the show. As both a performer and a writer on the series, he earned two Primetime Emmy Awards out of four nominations.

#21

James Clifford

#9007

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

James Clifford is an interdisciplinary scholar whose work combines perspectives from history, literature, history of science, and anthropology. Biography He grew up in New York City and was for thirty-three years Professor in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz until his retirement in 2011. Clifford and Hayden White were the first faculty directly appointed to the graduate-only department at UC-Santa Cruz. Clifford served as department Chair from 2004–2007, and was the founding director of UCSC's Center for Cultural Studies. He has been a visiti...

#22

Michael Tye

#9389

Overall Influence

2000 - Present (24 years)

Michael Tye is a British philosopher who is currently Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. He has made significant contributions to the philosophy of mind. Education and career Tye completed his undergraduate education at Oxford University in England, studying first physics and then physics and philosophy. He went on to complete a PhD in philosophy at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. Before moving to Texas, Tye taught at Haverford College in suburban Philadelphia and Temple University in Philadelphia proper. He was also a visiting professor at King's Co...

#23

Michael Bratman

#9671

Overall Influence

1945 - Present (79 years)

Michael E. Bratman is an American philosopher who is Durfee Professor in the School of Humanities & Sciences and Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University. Education and career Bratman graduated from Haverford College in 1967 and earned his Ph.D. in philosophy at Rockefeller University in 1974, where he worked with Donald Davidson. He joined the faculty at Stanford University in 1974, where he has taught ever since.

#24

Eric Chaisson

#10258

Overall Influence

1946 - Present (78 years)

Eric J. Chaisson is an American astrophysicist known for his research, teaching, and writing on the interdisciplinary science of cosmic evolution. He is a member of the Center for Astrophysics Harvard & Smithsonian, teaches natural science at Harvard University and is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

#25

Alf Hiltebeitel

#10721

Overall Influence

1942 - 2023 (81 years)

Alfred John Hiltebeitel was Columbian Professor of Religion, History, and Human Sciences at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., US. His academic specialism was in ancient Sanskrit epics such as the Mahabharata and Ramayana, together with Indian religious tradition and folklore.

#26

Stanley Kurtz

#11010

Overall Influence

1901 - Present (123 years)

Stanley Kurtz is an American conservative commentator, author and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He has taught at Harvard University and the University of Chicago. He is also a contributing editor to National Review.

#27

Akira Iriye

#11724

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (90 years)

is a historian of diplomatic history, international, and transnational history. He taught at University of Chicago and Harvard University until his retirement in 2005. In 1988 he served as president of the American Historical Association, the only Japanese citizen to do so, and also served as president of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. In 2005, he was awarded the Order of the Sacred Treasure, Gold and Silver Star, one of Japan's highest civilian honors. He was also awarded Japan's Yoshida Shigeru Prize for best book in public history. He has been a member of the Amer...

#28

Stephen J. Lippard

Stephen J. Lippard

#11909

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (84 years)

Stephen James Lippard is the Arthur Amos Noyes Emeritus Professor of Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is considered one of the founders of bioinorganic chemistry, studying the interactions of nonliving substances such as metals with biological systems. He is also considered a founder of metalloneurochemistry, the study of metal ions and their effects in the brain and nervous system. He has done pioneering work in understanding protein structure and synthesis, the enzymatic functions of methane monooxygenase , and the mechanisms of cisplatin anticancer drugs. His w...

#29

Walter Dean Burnham

#11940

Overall Influence

1930 - 2022 (92 years)

Walter Dean Burnham was an American political scientist who was an expert on elections and voting patterns. He was known for his quantitative analysis of national trends and patterns in voting behavior, the development of the "Party Systems" model, and the assembling of county election returns for the entire country. He was a professor in the political science department at the University of Texas at Austin.

#30

Ken Ludwig

#12664

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

Ken Ludwigis an American playwright , author, screenwriter, and director whose work has been performed in more than 30 countries in over 20 languages. He has had six productions on Broadway and eight in London’s West End. His 34 plays and musicals are staged throughout the United States and around the world every night of the year.

#31

Douglas Vakoch

#12908

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (63 years)

Douglas A. Vakoch is an American astrobiologist, search for extraterrestrial intelligence researcher, psychologist, and president of METI International, a nonprofit research and educational organization devoted to transmitting intentional signals to extraterrestrial civilizations. Vakoch led METI's participation in Sónar Calling GJ 273b, which transmitted a series of interstellar messages to Luyten's Star, located 12.4 light years from Earth. Vakoch advocates ongoing transmission projects, arguing that this does not increase risks of an alien invasion as suggested by British cosmologist Stephen Hawking.

#32

Jay Pasachoff

#13500

Overall Influence

1943 - 2022 (79 years)

Jay Myron Pasachoff was an American astronomer. Pasachoff was Field Memorial Professor of Astronomy at Williams College and the author of textbooks and tradebooks in astronomy, physics, mathematics, and other sciences.

#33

Morton Kaplan

#14343

Overall Influence

1921 - 2017 (96 years)

Morton A. Kaplan was an American political scientist who was Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science, Emeritus, at the University of Chicago. He was also President of the Professors World Peace Academy International; and Editor of the World&I magazine from its founding in 1986 until 2004.

#34

Joseph Hooton Taylor Jr.

Joseph Hooton Taylor Jr.

#14780

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

Joseph Hooton Taylor Jr. is an American astrophysicist and Nobel Prize laureate in Physics for his discovery with Russell Alan Hulse of a "new type of pulsar, a discovery that has opened up new possibilities for the study of gravitation."

#35

Elisabeth Young-Bruehl

#15040

Overall Influence

1946 - 2011 (65 years)

Elisabeth Young-Bruehl was an American academic, psychotherapist and psychoanalyst. She published a wide range of books, most notably biographies of Hannah Arendt and Anna Freud. Her 1982 biography of Arendt won the first Harcourt Award while The Anatomy of Prejudices won the Association of American Publishers' prize for Best Book in Psychology in 1996. She was a member of the Toronto Psychoanalytic Society and co-founder of Caversham Productions, a company that makes psychoanalytic educational materials.

#36

Jack N. Rakove

#15231

Overall Influence

1947 - Present (77 years)

Jack Norman Rakove is an American historian, author, and professor at Stanford University. He is a Pulitzer Prize winner. Biography Rakove was born in Chicago to Political Science Professor Milton L. Rakove and his wife, Shirley. The elder Rakove taught at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Barat College .

#37

George Smith

#16739

Overall Influence

1941 - Present (83 years)

George Pearson Smith is an American biologist and Nobel laureate. He is a Curators' Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Biological Sciences at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri, US. Career Born in Norwalk, Connecticut, he earned his A.B. degree from Haverford College in biology, was a high school teacher and lab technician for a year, and earned his PhD degree in bacteriology and immunology from Harvard University. He was a postdoc at the University of Wisconsin before moving to Columbia, Missouri and joining the University of Missouri faculty in 1975. He spent the 1983–1984 a...

#38

Timothy Gantz

#17707

Overall Influence

1945 - 2004 (59 years)

Timothy Nolan Gantz was an American classical scholar and the author of Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources. Education Gantz received his Bachelor of Arts from Haverford College in 1967, and his Ph.D. in Classics from Princeton University in 1970.

#39

Eric Turkheimer

Eric Turkheimer

#17782

Overall Influence

Eric Nathan Turkheimer is an American psychologist and the Hugh Scott Hamilton Professor of psychology at the University of Virginia. Early life and education Turkheimer is the son of Nathan Turkheimer, the former board chairman of the public relations law firm Turkheimer & Ryan, Inc., and his wife, Barbara Tack Turkheimer. He grew up in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, where he graduated from Croton Harmon High School in 1971. He is Jewish. He received his B.A. in psychology from Haverford College in 1976. He earned his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Texas at Austin in 1986, ...

#40

Charles L. Bennett

Charles L. Bennett

#18087

Overall Influence

1956 - Present (68 years)

Charles L. Bennett is an American observational astrophysicist. He is a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor, the Alumni Centennial Professor of Physics and Astronomy and a Gilman Scholar at Johns Hopkins University. He is the Principal Investigator of NASA's highly successful Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe .

#41

Kōichirō Matsuura

Kōichirō Matsuura

#18254

Overall Influence

1937 - Present (87 years)

Kōichirō Matsuura is a Japanese diplomat. He is the former Director-General of UNESCO. He was first elected in 1999 to a six-year term and reelected on 12 October 2005 for four years, following a reform instituted by the 29th session of the General Conference. In November 2009, he was replaced by Irina Bokova.

#42

Michael Sells

#18785

Overall Influence

1949 - Present (75 years)

Michael Anthony Sells is John Henry Barrows Professor of Islamic History and Literature in the Divinity School and in the Department of Comparative Literature at the University of Chicago. Michael Sells studies and teaches in the areas of Qur'anic studies, Sufism, Arabic and Islamic love poetry, mysticism , and religion and violence.

#43

R. R. Reno

#18926

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (65 years)

Russell Ronald Reno III , known as R. R. Reno, is the editor of First Things magazine. He was formerly a professor of theology and ethics at Creighton University. Biography Reno was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1959, and grew up in Towson, Maryland. A graduate of Towson High School in 1978, after a year living in his tent in Yosemite Valley, he attended Haverford College, receiving a B.A. in 1983. He began graduate study at Yale University in the Department of Religious Studies in 1984 and completed his doctoral degree in 1990 in the area of religious ethics. While in graduate school he met and married Juliana Miller, with whom he has had two children, Rachel and Jesse .

#44

Justin E. H. Smith

#19902

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (52 years)

Justin Smith-Ruiu is an American-Canadian professor of history and philosophy of science at the Université Paris Cité. His primary research interests include Leibniz, Post-structuralism, early modern philosophy, history and philosophy of biology, classical Indian philosophy, the history and philosophy of anthropology.

#45

David Bressoud

#20077

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (74 years)

David Marius Bressoud is an American mathematician who works in number theory, combinatorics, and special functions. As of 2019 he is DeWitt Wallace Professor of Mathematics at Macalester College, Director of the Conference Board of the Mathematical Sciences and a former President of the Mathematical Association of America.

#46

Stephen G. Emerson

#20707

Overall Influence

Stephen Gould Emerson is an American academic who was the 13th president of Haverford College from July 1, 2007, to August 10, 2011. In February 2012, he was appointed Director of the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center, and he will also hold the Clyde ’56 and Helen Wu Professorship in Immunology at the Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.

#47

Anthony G. Amsterdam

#21876

Overall Influence

1935 - Present (89 years)

Anthony Guy Amsterdam is an American lawyer and University Professor Emeritus at New York University School of Law. In 1981, Alan Dershowitz called Amsterdam “the most distinguished law professor in the United States.”

#48

George Segal

#21986

Overall Influence

1934 - 2021 (87 years)

George Segal Jr. was an American actor. He became popular in the 1960s and 1970s for playing both dramatic and comedic roles. After first rising to prominence with roles in acclaimed films such as Ship of Fools and King Rat , he co-starred in the classic drama Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? .

#49

Stanley Nider Katz

#22219

Overall Influence

1934 - Present (90 years)

Stanley Nider Katz is an American historian specializing in American legal and constitutional history and the history of philanthropy. He is director of the Princeton University Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies and director emeritus of the American Council of Learned Societies. He graduated from Harvard University with an AB , MA , and PhD in American colonial history . He taught at Harvard from 1961 to 1965, serving as Allston Burr Senior Tutor of Leverett House from 1963 to 1965. He went on to teach at the University of Wisconsin–Madison , the University of Chicago Law School , Princeton University , and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

#50

Ron Christie

#23389

Overall Influence

1969 - Present (55 years)

Ronald Irvin Christie is an American government relations expert and Republican political strategist, who has also worked as a member of former Vice President Dick Cheney's staff. He is the author of two books, and an occasional guest on various cable news programs. He serves as an adjunct professor at Cornell University, Georgetown University, George Washington University, and Haverford College. He is currently the CEO of Christie Strategies, a communications and issue management firm that he founded in Alexandria, Virginia.

Image Attributions