The Most Influential People Across History
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
F. Sherwood Rowland
#5512
Overall Influence
1927 - 2012 (85 years)
Frank Sherwood "Sherry" Rowland was an American Nobel laureate and a professor of chemistry at the University of California, Irvine. His research was on atmospheric chemistry and chemical kinetics. His best-known work was the discovery that chlorofluorocarbons contribute to ozone depletion.
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Ezra Vogel
#7318
Overall Influence
1930 - 2020 (90 years)
Ezra Feivel Vogel was an American sociologist who wrote prolifically on modern Japan, China, and Korea. He was Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University. His 1978 book Japan as Number One: Lessons for America was a best-seller in both English and Japanese, and his 2011 book Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China won the Lionel Gelber Prize.
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William H. Gass
#10043
Overall Influence
1924 - 2017 (93 years)
William Howard Gass was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, critic, and philosophy professor. He wrote three novels, three collections of short stories, a collection of novellas, and seven volumes of essays, three of which won National Book Critics Circle Award prizes and one of which, A Temple of Texts , won the Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism. His 1995 novel The Tunnel received the American Book Award. His 2013 novel Middle C won the 2015 William Dean Howells Medal.
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Deborah Bräutigam
#11178
Overall Influence
Deborah Bräutigam is an American political scientist, currently the Bernard L. Schwartz Professor of Political Economy at Johns Hopkins University and the Director of the China Africa Research Initiative at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. Bräutigam studies international development policies and foreign aid, focusing on Chinese projects in Africa.
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Seymour Jonathan Singer
#11610
Overall Influence
1924 - 2017 (93 years)
Seymour Jonathan Singer was an American cell biologist and professor of biology, emeritus, at the University of California, San Diego. Biography Singer was born in New York City and attended Columbia University, where he earned his B.A. in 1943. He received his doctorate from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn in 1947. He worked as a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Linus Pauling at Caltech during 1947–1948, where he, along with Harvey Itano, co-discovered the basis of abnormal hemoglobin in sickle-cell anemia, reported in the famous paper "Sickle Cell Anemia, a Molecular Disease". He worked for the U.S.
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Richard North Patterson
#12063
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
Richard North Patterson is an American fiction writer, attorney and political commentator. Education and law career Patterson graduated in 1968 from Ohio Wesleyan University and has been awarded that school's Distinguished Achievement Citation and his national fraternity's Alumni Achievement Award. He is a 1971 graduate of the Case Western Reserve University School of Law, and a recipient of that University's President's Award for Distinguished Alumni and its President's Award for Excellence. He has served as an Assistant Attorney General for the State of Ohio; a trial attorney for the Securi...
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Tremper Longman
#12522
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Tremper Longman III is an Old Testament scholar, theologian, professor and author of several books, including 2009 ECPA Christian Book Award winner Dictionary of the Old Testament: Wisdom, Poetry & Writings.
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William Hsiao
#15877
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (88 years)
William C. Hsiao , an American economist, is the K.T. Li Research Professor of Economics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts. He is internationally recognized for his work on health care financing and social insurance.
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Kathryn Barger
#20060
Overall Influence
Kathryn Ann Barger-Leibrich is an American politician, serving as a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors for the 5th District since 2016. A member of the Republican Party, Barger served as Chair of Los Angeles County from 2019 to 2020. She previously served as Chief Deputy Supervisor and Chief of Staff to her predecessor Mayor Michael D. Antonovich.
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Shirin R. Tahir-Kheli
#25472
Overall Influence
Shirin R. Tahir-Kheli is an American political scientist who also served in the Department of State. In 2006, she was appointed as the first Ambassador for women's empowerment by the United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as well as Senior Advisor to the Secretary of State on United Nations Reform. She was sworn in as the First American Muslim Ambassador in July 1990. Dr. Tahir-Kheli was the Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Democracy, Human Rights and International Operations at the White House National Security Council, from 2003-2005. She has served thr...
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Margaret Drugovich
#30363
Overall Influence
Margaret L. Drugovich is an American academic administrator and healthcare policy researcher who is currently serving as interim president of Marietta College. She previously served as the 10th president of Hartwick College from 2008 to 2022.
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Jeffrey Ford
#33049
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Jeffrey Ford is an American writer in the fantastic genre tradition, although his works have spanned genres including fantasy, science fiction and mystery. His work is characterized by a sweeping imaginative power, humor, literary allusion, and a fascination with tales told within tales. He is a graduate of Binghamton University, where he studied with the novelist John Gardner.
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Thomas R. Tritton
#34282
Overall Influence
Thomas R. Tritton was the twelfth president of Haverford College, serving from 1997 to 2007. After his presidency, he served as president in residence at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. From 2008 to 2013, he served as president and CEO of the Chemical Heritage Foundation.
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Don Saliers
#34486
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (87 years)
Don E. Saliers is an American theologian specializing in homiletics and liturgics. He was the William R. Cannon Distinguished Professor of Theology and Worship at the Candler School of Theology of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Although he retired from Candler in 2007, Professor Saliers returned to Candler as Theologian-in-Residence in 2015.
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Ram Samudrala
#36027
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
Ram Samudrala is a professor of computational biology and bioinformatics at the University at Buffalo, United States. He researches protein folding, structure, function, interaction, design, and evolution.
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William Dunham
#37164
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
William Wade Dunham is an American writer who was originally trained in topology but became interested in the history of mathematics and specializes in Leonhard Euler. He has received several awards for writing and teaching on this subject.
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Imad Rahman
#41805
Overall Influence
Imad Rahman is a Pakistani-American fiction writer whose first short story collection was published in 2004. Biography A native of Karachi, Pakistan who immigrated to the United States at age 18 to attend college, Rahman was an assistant professor of English at Kansas State University, and, as of 2008, is an assistant professor of English at Cleveland State University, where he directs the Imagination Writers Conference. He is a graduate of Ohio Wesleyan University, and holds a Master of Arts from Ohio University and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Florida. He was the James C. McC...
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Leonard Schlesinger
#46722
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Leonard A. Schlesinger is an American author, educator, and business leader. He is currently the Baker Foundation Professor at Harvard Business School and President Emeritus of Babson College where he served as the college's 12th President from 2008 through 2013.
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Wendie Malick
#48750
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Wendie Malick is an American actress and former fashion model, known for her roles in various television comedies. She starred as Judith Tupper Stone in the HBO sitcom Dream On, and as Nina Van Horn in the NBC sitcom Just Shoot Me!, for which she was nominated for two Primetime Emmys and a Golden Globe Award.
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Clark Gregg
#49229
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Robert Clark Gregg Jr. is an American actor, director, and screenwriter. He is best known for playing the original character Phil Coulson in films and television series set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe from 2008 to 2021. Gregg also voiced Coulson in the animated television series Ultimate Spider-Man and the video games Lego Marvel Super Heroes , Marvel Heroes , and Lego Marvel's Avengers .
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Virgil Aldrich
#51239
Overall Influence
1903 - 1998 (95 years)
Virgil Charles Aldrich , was an American philosopher of art, language, and religion. Early life and education The son of Floyd Clement Aldrich and his wife Ann Hanley, Virgil Aldrich earned his Bachelor of Arts degree at Ohio Wesleyan University in 1925. He studied at Oxford University in 1927 and then went on to earn a Diplôme d'Études Supérieures de Philosophie at the Sorbonne in 1928 before completing his Ph.D. at the University of California Berkeley in 1931. He married Louise Hafliger on 3 September 1927 and they had one son, David Virgil Aldrich.
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Patricia Heaton
#58670
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
Patricia Helen Heaton is an American actress, producer and comedienne. She began her career appearing in a recurring role in the ABC drama series, Thirtysomething , and later appearing in the comedy films Memoirs of an Invisible Man and Beethoven . Heaton went to star in the short-lived sitcoms Room for Two , Someone Like Me and Women of the House before landing the role of Debra Barone in the CBS sitcom Everybody Loves Raymond .
Go to Profile#23
Boyce McDaniel
#58986
Overall Influence
1917 - 2002 (85 years)
Boyce Dawkins McDaniel was an American nuclear physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project and later directed the Cornell University Laboratory of Nuclear Studies . McDaniel was skilled in constructing "atom smashing" devices to study the fundamental structure of matter and helped to build the most powerful particle accelerators of his time. Together with his graduate student, he invented the pair spectrometer.
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Elizabeth A. Phelps
#62843
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Elizabeth Anya Phelps is the Pershing Square Professor of Human Neuroscience at Harvard University in the Department of Psychology. She is a cognitive neuroscientist known for her research at the intersection of memory, learning, and emotion. She was the recipient of the Social and Affective Neuroscience Society Distinguished Scholar Award and the 21st Century Scientist Award from the James S. McDonnell Foundation, as well as other honors and awards in her field. Phelps was honored with the 2018 Thomas William Salmon Lecture and Medal in Psychiatry at the New York Academy of Medicine. She r...
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Robert M. Stein
#65137
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Robert M. Stein is an American political scientist and Lena Gohlman Fox Professor of political science at Rice University. He is an expert in urban politics and public policy. He co-authored Perpetuating the Pork Barrel: Policy Subsystems and American Democracy and authored Urban Alternatives: Public and Private Markets in the Provision of Local Services .
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Robert L. Last
#68196
Overall Influence
Robert L. Last is a plant biochemical genomicist who studies metabolic processes that protect plants from the environment and produce products important for animal and human nutrition. His research has covered production and breakdown of essential amino acids, the synthesis and protective roles of Vitamin C and Vitamin E as well as identification of mechanisms that protect photosystem II from damage, and synthesis and biological functions of plant protective specialized metabolites . Four central questions are: how are leaf and seed amino acids levels regulated, what mechanisms protect ...
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Edward D. Miller
#68933
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Edward D. Miller Jr. was the Frances Watt Baker, M.D. and Lenox D. Baker Jr., M.D. Dean of the Medical Faculty at Johns Hopkins University and the Chief Executive Officer of Johns Hopkins Medicine from 1997 to 2012.
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Ed Elton
#70587
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
Edwin Elton is a Nomura Professor of Finance at New York University Stern School of Business and Academic Director of the Stern Doctoral Program. Biography Professor Elton has served as a portfolio theory and investment management consultant for major financial institutions in Asia, Europe, and the United States. He has been a senior research fellow at the International Institute of Management in Berlin and a visiting scholar at the European Institute for Advanced Studies in Management in Brussels and at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.
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Raymond F. Hopkins
#74978
Overall Influence
1939 - 2023 (84 years)
Raymond F. Hopkins is an American political science professor and expert on food politics and food policy. Hopkins taught at Swarthmore College from 1967 until his retirement in 2007, where he was the Richter Professor of Political Science.
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Maggie Smith
#76763
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (47 years)
Maggie Smith is an American poet, freelance writer, and editor who lives in Bexley, Ohio. Smith's poem "Good Bones," originally published in the journal Waxwing in June 2016, has been widely circulated on social media and read by an estimated one million people. A Wall Street Journal story in May 2020 described it as "keeping the realities of life's ugliness from young innocents," citing that the poem has gone viral after catastrophes such as the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting, the May 2017 suicide bombing at a concert in Manchester, U.K., the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas, and the coronavirus pandemic.
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Aaron John Sharp
#78147
Overall Influence
1904 - 1997 (93 years)
Aaron John Sharp , known professionally as Jack Sharp, was an American botanist and bryologist, considered an expert on mosses. Early life Sharp was raised on a dairy farm near East Liberty, Ohio. He attended Ohio Wesleyan University and earned his degree in botany in 1927. After receiving his undergraduate degree, Sharp was introduced to bryology by George Elwood Nichols while taking his classes at the University of Michigan Biological Station. Sharp earned his M.S. from the University of Oklahoma while studying under Paul Sears in 1929.
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Ron Leibman
#82781
Overall Influence
1937 - 2019 (82 years)
Ron Leibman was an American actor. He won both the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Play in 1993 for his performance as Roy Cohn in Angels in America. Leibman also won a Primetime Emmy Award in 1979 for his role as Martin 'Kaz' Kazinsky in his short-lived crime drama series Kaz.
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Barbara Boucher Owens
#86602
Overall Influence
Barbara Boucher Owens is an American computer scientist noted for her leadership in computer science education. She was the Chair of SIGCSE from 2007 to 2010 and an elected member of the SIGCSE Board for 16 years from 1997 to 2013.
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Irving H. Bartlett
#92715
Overall Influence
1923 - 2006 (83 years)
Irving Henry Bartlett was an American historian. After graduating from Ohio Wesleyan University, Bartlett obtained his master's and doctoral degrees at Brown University. He taught at Cape Cod Community College, the Rhode Island College of Education, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before joining the University of Massachusetts Boston, where he was the John F. Kennedy Professor of American Civilization. Bartlett was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1966. He died in Hingham, Massachusetts on July 1, 2006, aged 83.
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Matthew W. Finkin
#94318
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Matthew W. Finkin is one of the leading labor law scholars in the United States. He co-authors the foundational textbook Labor Law: Cases and Materials and is co-editor of the international journal, the Comparative Labor Law & Policy Journal.
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Arlene Mosel
#106419
Overall Influence
1921 - 1996 (75 years)
Arlene Tichy Mosel was an American children's librarian who wrote the text for two award-winning children's picture books illustrated by Blair Lent Tikki Tikki Tembo won the annual Boston Globe–Horn Book Award and Lent won the annual Caldecott Medal for The Funny Little Woman.
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Melvin Van Peebles
#113685
Overall Influence
1932 - 2021 (89 years)
Melvin Van Peebles was an American actor, filmmaker, writer, and composer. He worked as an active filmmaker into the 2000s. His feature film debut, The Story of a Three-Day Pass , was based on his own French-language novel and was shot in France, as it was difficult for a black American director to get work at the time. The film won an award at the San Francisco International Film Festival which gained him the interest of Hollywood studios, leading to his American feature debut Watermelon Man, in 1970. Eschewing further overtures from Hollywood, he used the successes he had so far to bankrol...
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Jeff Long
#116091
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (64 years)
Jeffrey Paul Long is an American athletics director, most recently at the University of Kansas. He is the former Vice Chancellor and director of athletics at the University of Arkansas and joined the University in 2008 after holding the same position at the University of Pittsburgh. Long's career in administration includes positions at the University of Oklahoma, University of Michigan, Virginia Tech, and Eastern Kentucky University.
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Carol Neuman de Vegvar
#117328
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (71 years)
Carol L. Neuman de Vegvar is an art historian and Professor of Fine Arts at Ohio Wesleyan University. Career De Vagvar undertook undergraduate study at Bryn Mawr College before completing her PhD on Anglo-Saxon art in Northumbria in 1981 at the University of Pennsylvania. She was elected as a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London on 5 June 2003.
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Mike Neu
#121103
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
Michael David Neu is an American football coach and former quarterback, who is the current head football coach of the Ball State Cardinals. He played college football at Ball State for Paul Schudel from 1990 to 1993. Neu played in the Canadian Football League for one season, in France Championnat Élite Division 1 one season, then in the Arena Football League for 2 seasons from 1996 to 1997. He then served as the head coach of the af2's Augusta Stallions , the AFL's Carolina Cobras and the New Orleans VooDoo . In 2016, Neu returned to his alma mater, Ball State.
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Susan Gerhart
#122753
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Susan Gerhart is a semi-retired computer scientist. Education Susan Gerhart received her BA in Mathematics from Ohio Wesleyan University, her MS in Communication Sciences from University of Michigan, and her PhD in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University. She completed her thesis "Verification of APL Programs" in 1972 under thesis advisor Donald W. Loveland. She credited Sputnik with having inspired her to study science.
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John Peoples Jr.
#123479
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (91 years)
John Peoples Jr. is an American physicist who served as Fermilab's third director, served as director of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, and oversaw the shutdown of the Superconducting Super Collider. Early life and education John Peoples Jr. was born on January 22, 1933, in New York City. After graduating from Staten Island Academy in 1950, he received a BSEE from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1955. He worked as an engineer at Martin-Marietta Corporation until 1959, when he entered Columbia University.
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Ibrahim K. Sundiata
#124556
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Ibrahim K. Sundiata is an American scholar of West African and African-American history. He received his undergraduate education at Ohio Wesleyan University , and a Ph.D. at Northwestern University, where he studied under Ivor Wilks. He is currently the Samuel J. and Augusta Spector Professor of History and African and African-American Studies at Brandeis University.
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Bradley Cardinale
#135325
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Bradley Cardinale is an American ecologist, conservation biologist, academic and researcher. He is Head of the Department of Ecosystem Science and Management and Penn State University. Cardinale's work has focused on the conservation and restoration of biodiversity in natural systems, as well as the ecological design of human engineered systems that benefit from biodiversity. He uses mathematical models, lab- and field-based experiments, observational studies of natural ecosystems, and meta-analyses of existing data to examine how human activities impact Earth's biological diversity, and to protect and manage species, their ecosystems, and the services they provide to society.
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George S. Howard
#143188
Overall Influence
1902 - 1995 (93 years)
Colonel George Sallade Howard was commander and conductor of The United States Air Force Band between 1947 and 1963. Life and career A native of Reamstown, Pennsylvania, Howard became a student of Patrick Conway at the Conway Military Band School located on the campus of Ithaca College and played clarinet in Conway's professional band. In 1925 he became the band director of Ohio Wesleyan University , and he earned Bachelor of Arts in Music Education from that institution in 1929. He later earned degrees from New York University ; Chicago Musical College ; and Ithaca College .
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William G. Batchelder
#154401
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (82 years)
William G. Batchelder III was an American politician who was the 101st Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives, serving from 2011 to 2014. He also represented the 69th District of the Ohio House of Representatives from 2007 to 2014, and served in the House from 1969 to 1998 previously. He was a Republican.
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George Conrades
#161670
Overall Influence
George Conrades is the former Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Akamai Technologies. Prior to Akamai, Conrades served as CEO of BBN Technologies. Before joining BBN he spent 31 years at IBM, running its U.S. and Asia-Pacific businesses and heading two manufacturing and development groups. Mr. Conrades currently serves as an Executive Advisor to Akamai Technologies and on the Board of Directors of Oracle Corporation. He has also served on the Boards of Ironwood Pharmaceuticals and Harley-Davidson.
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Amy Butcher
#171076
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
Amy Butcher is an American writer and essayist. Her memoir, Mothertrucker, was published from Amazon Publishing literary press Little A Books in 2022. Her first book, Visiting Hours: A Memoir of Friendship and Murder, was published in 2015. In August 2019, Makeready Films announced a film adaptation of Mothertrucker will be produced and directed by Jill Soloway and will star Julianne Moore. In February 2020, the Ohio State Arts Council awarded excerpts of Mothertrucker an Individual Excellence Award.
Go to Profile#49
Sandra Thompson
#180324
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Sandra Thompson is an American novelist, short story writer, essayist and memoirist. Life She was raised in Park Ridge, Illinois. She graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University, and from Brooklyn College with an MFA, where she studied with Jonathan Baumbach. She taught at the University of South Florida and at New College of Florida.
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Tanya Zanish-Belcher
#189234
Overall Influence
Tanya Zanish-Belcher is an archivist and associate professor. She is currently the Director of Special Collections and Archives at the Z. Smith Reynolds Library at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She specializes in Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies and has written several books and articles as well as given presentations on these topics. She has been invited to speak on several occasions as an expert historian and archivist across the United States.
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