Search People Result | Academic Influence

Find the most influential people in 24 academic disciplines and numerous subdisciplines

Find famous and important people related to your research. This is an excellent tool for research papers, topic papers, and building a bibliography. Using our influence-based algorithm, our rankings synthesize data from Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef.

Students and researchers now have a fast and reliable way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you want to find history’s most influential philsosophers, or the world’s most influential mathematicians currently, now you can.

We also provide custom rankings of people by discipline as well as interviews with influential academics who are currently active.

To use this tool, select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) relevant to your research, and specify influential academics by history, world, or US. Even results that are counterintuitive are often enlightening (our algorithm always picks up a signal).

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List of the most influential people

#1

Jeffrey Arnett

#18231

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (68 years)

Jeffrey Jensen Arnett is a professor in the Department of Psychology at Clark University in Massachusetts. His main research interest is in "emerging adulthood", a term he coined, which refers to the distinct phase between adolescence and young adulthood, occurring from the ages of 18 to 25.

#2

Bruce Frohnen

#35754

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (63 years)

Bruce P. Frohnen is a Professor of Law at Ohio Northern University College of Law, where he teaches courses in Public and Constitutional Law, Jurisprudence, and Legal Profession. Early life He holds a J.D. from Emory University School of Law, where he worked under the late Harold J. Berman, a noted legal historian involved in renewing understanding of the role of religion in the development of the western legal tradition. He also holds a Ph.D. in Government from Cornell University and taught political philosophy for several years before entering law school.

#3

Don West

#52116

Overall Influence

1906 - 1992 (86 years)

Donald Lee West was an American writer, poet, educator, trade union organizer, civil-rights activist and a co-founder of the Highlander Folk School. Early life and career West was born in Devil's Hollow, Gilmer County, Georgia, the child of North Georgia sharecroppers. In high school he led a protest against an on-campus showing of the film The Birth of a Nation and was eventually expelled for other conflicts. He was also expelled from Lincoln Memorial University, in Harrogate, Tennessee, for leading another protest against the paternalism of the campus, though he eventually returned and graduated in 1929.

#4

Vincent Sherman

Vincent Sherman

#62695

Overall Influence

1906 - 2006 (100 years)

Vincent Sherman was an American director and actor who worked in Hollywood. His movies include Mr. Skeffington , Nora Prentiss , and The Young Philadelphians . He began his career as an actor on Broadway and later in film. He directed B-movies for Warner Bros. and then moved to directing to A-pictures. He was a good friend of actor Errol Flynn, whom he directed in Adventures of Don Juan . He directed three Joan Crawford movies: The Damned Don't Cry , Harriet Craig , and Goodbye, My Fancy .

#5

Emily S. Gurley

#70373

Overall Influence

Emily S. Gurley is an American epidemiologist. She is a professor of the practice in the department of epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Education Gurley completed a BA at Oglethorpe University in 1996 and a MPH from Emory University in 2002. She earned a PhD from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in 2012.

#6

Lawrence Schall

#74707

Overall Influence

Lawrence M. "Larry" Schall is the president of the New England Commission of Higher Education and the former and sixteenth president of Oglethorpe University, a private liberal arts college in Atlanta, Georgia.

#7

Diana Fleischman

#109286

Overall Influence

1981 - Present (44 years)

Diana Santos Fleischman is an American evolutionary psychologist. Her field of research includes the study of disgust, human sexuality, and hormones and behaviour. She is also involved in the effective altruism, animal welfare, and feminism movements.

#8

Christopher J. McFadden

#118032

Overall Influence

1957 - Present (68 years)

Christopher J. McFadden is an American lawyer and Judge on the Georgia Court of Appeals. Biography McFadden was born August 9, 1957, in Akron, Ohio. He received his Bachelor of Arts from Oglethorpe University in 1980 and his Juris Doctor from the University of Georgia School of Law in 1985. He practiced as a sole practitioner in Decatur from 1988 until his election to Georgia the Court of Appeals in November 2010. He is currently serving his second five-year term.

#9

Sable Elyse Smith

#124839

Overall Influence

1986 - Present (39 years)

Sable Elyse Smith is an interdisciplinary artist, write and educator based in New York. Smith works in photography, neon, text, appropriated imagery, sculpture, and video installation connecting language, violence, and pop culture with autobiographical subject matter. In 2018, Smith was an Artist-in Residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem. Her work was first featured at several areas such as MoMA ps1, New Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Philadelphia, MIT list visual arts center, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and other places. The artist lives and works in Richmond, Virginia, and New York City. She has ...

#10

Hugh P. Thompson

#129732

Overall Influence

1943 - Present (82 years)

Hugh Proctor Thompson is the former Chief Justice of the Georgia Supreme Court. He was originally appointed to the Supreme Court by Governor Zell Miller on March 1, 1994. Thompson is a graduate of the Walter F. George School of Law of Mercer University. Thompson was born in Macon, Georgia.

#11

Jill R. Harper

#136235

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (53 years)

Jill Reiss Harper is an American molecular biologist and policy advisor serving as the deputy director for science management and executive officer at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

#12

Dar'shun Kendrick

#154311

Overall Influence

1982 - Present (43 years)

Dar'shun Nicole Kendrick is an American attorney and a member of the Georgia House of Representatives, representing the 95th district; she previously represented the 94th and 93rd districts. She is a member of the Democratic Party.

#13

Michael J. Beran

#168547

Overall Influence

#14

John Burke

#176637

Overall Influence

1988 - Present (37 years)

John Burke is an American pianist, composer, and songwriter based in Atlanta, Georgia. Burke is best known for his solo piano albums. He has also composed scores for film, video games, and theatre. Background Burke was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, where he studied Spanish and music at Oglethorpe University. He later studied public administration at Georgia State University. While in school, Burke discovered pianist George Winston and keyboardist Ray Manzarek and was inspired to become a pianist and composer.

#15

Reginald F. Frye

#181935

Overall Influence

#16

Ahmet Cumhur Akin

#184034

Overall Influence

#17

Alan Loehle

#185935

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (71 years)

Alan David Loehle is an American contemporary artist and professor of art at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, Georgia. Education and career Born in Chicago, Illinois, Loehle received his B.F.A. from the University of Georgia in 1975 and his M.F.A. from the University of Arizona in 1979. He began exhibiting his paintings in Atlanta and New York City in 1983, and his work was featured in a 1999 print exhibition in the Paris Review. He has been teaching at Oglethorpe since 2001, and received a Guggenheim Fellowship for Painting in 2007.

#18

Robert Loftin

#187774

Overall Influence

1938 - 1993 (55 years)

Robert Wayne Loftin was an American environmentalist, ornithologist, and philosopher. He was a professor at the University of North Florida, where he founded the Sawmill Slough Conservation Club and designed the campus's nature trails. The trails on UNF's campus were subsequently renamed the Robert Loftin Nature Trails in his memory on August 31, 1993.

#19

Frank B. Anderson

Frank B. Anderson

1882 - 1966 (84 years)

Frank Butner Anderson was an American college football, and baseball coach as well as athletic director. He was the first football and baseball coach in the history of Oglethorpe University and the namesake of its baseball field. The field was dedicated as such on May 11, 1963. Anderson was inducted into the Oglethorpe Athletic Hall of Fame, a member of its inaugural class of 1962. He always wore his baseball uniform to practice and to games. He is known by some as the "Dean of Southern Baseball Coaches." Frank is the father of Alf Anderson.

#20

Margaret Elizabeth Ashley-Towle

1902 - 1985 (83 years)

Margaret Elizabeth Ashley-Towle was possibly the earliest professional woman in Southeast archaeology. She was born in Atlanta, Georgia to Claude Lordawick Ashley, a chief of the Atlanta city council, and Elizabeth Miller, the daughter of Captain Hiram Miller, a veteran of the Federal army.

#21

Sidney Lanier

1842 - 1881 (39 years)

Sidney Clopton Lanier was an American musician, poet and author. He served in the Confederate States Army as a private, worked on a blockade-running ship for which he was imprisoned , taught, worked at a hotel where he gave musical performances, was a church organist, and worked as a lawyer. As a poet he sometimes used dialects. Many of his poems are written in heightened, but often archaic, American English. He became a flautist and sold poems to publications. He eventually became a professor of literature at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and is known for his adaptation of musical meter to poetry.

#22

Ernest Hartsock

1903 - 1930 (27 years)

Ernest Abner Hartsock was an American poets of the 1920s. He published three volumes of poetry and served as a Professor of Poetics at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, Georgia. Suffering from pernicious anemia, Hartsock died on December 14, 1930, at the age of 27.

#23

Thornwell Jacobs

Thornwell Jacobs

1877 - 1956 (79 years)

Thornwell Jacobs was a professor, historian, author, fundraiser, university founder, and Presbyterian minister. He earned degrees from Presbyterian College in South Carolina and the Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey. He wrote The Law of White Circle, a novel about mulattos set during the Atlanta race massacre of 1906.

#24

Thomas Anthony Thacher

Thomas Anthony Thacher

1815 - 1886 (71 years)

Thomas Anthony Thacher was an American classicist and college administrator. Early life Thomas A. Thacher was born January 11, 1815, in Hartford, Connecticut, the son of Anne and Peter Thacher. His first American ancestor on his father's side was Thomas Thacher who emigrated from England to Massachusetts in 1635, and later became minister of the Old South Meeting House in Boston; on his mother's side he was descended from the Rev. Thomas Buckingham of Saybrook, one of the founders of the Collegiate School of Connecticut, since known as Yale College. He had his preparatory training at the Hop...

#25

Joseph LeConte

1823 - 1901 (78 years)

Joseph Le Conte was a physician, geologist, professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and early California conservationist. Early life Of Huguenot descent, he was born in Liberty County, Georgia, to Louis Le Conte, patriarch of the noted LeConte family, and Ann Quarterman. He was educated at Franklin College in Athens, Georgia , where he was a member of the Phi Kappa Literary Society. After graduation in 1841, he studied medicine and received his degree at the New York College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1845. After practising for three or four years in Macon, Georgia, he entered Harvard University and studied natural history under Louis Agassiz.

#26

William J. Sasnett

1820 - 1865 (45 years)

William Jacob Sasnett was an American educator and was the first President of East Alabama Mens College, now known as Auburn University, from 1858 to 1861. Biography William J. Sasnett was a graduate of Oglethorpe University in Atlanta, Georgia. He served as a Methodist clergyman. He was a professor at Oxford College, now known as Emory University. He became the first President of East Alabama Mens College, now known as Auburn University, from 1858 to 1861.

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