Search People Result | Academic Influence

Find the most important people in 24 academic disciplines from 4000 BCE to today

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 proprietary AI program, we have ranked everyone in Wikipedia, Wikidata, Semantic Scholar, and CrossRef based on the number of citations, publications, and academically relevant web presence.

Students and researchers now have the easiest and fastest way to find influential thinkers from 24 disciplines and 300 sub-disciplines (and growing). If you ever wanted to find famous medieval biologists, or influential engineers during the industrial revolution, now you can!

We’ve also put together our own custom rankings of people by discipline. And speaking of influential people, don’t forget to check out the interviews we do with the influential people of today!

Use the power of AI for your research! Simply select the discipline (and optional subdiscipline) most relevant to your research, and the time periods of interest, and get enlightening results.

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

Start (Year)

End (Year)

List of the most influential people for the years 2010 – 2020

Jonathan Gottschall

Jonathan Gottschall

#46626

Overall Influence

1972 - Present (51 years)

Jonathan Gottschall is an American literary scholar specializing in literature and evolution. He holds the title of Research Fellow in the English department of Washington & Jefferson College in Pennsylvania. He is the author or editor of seven books.

Gary Namie

#72359

Overall Influence

Gary Namie is a social psychologist and anti-workplace bullying activist. He is the co-founder and director of the Workplace Bullying Institute, and is widely regarded as North America’s foremost authority on the topic of workplace bullying.

Joe Philbin

#161049

Overall Influence

1961 - Present (62 years)

Joseph Anthony Philbin is an American football coach who currently serves as the offensive line coach for the Dallas Cowboys of the National Football League. He was the head coach of the Miami Dolphins, a position he held from 2012 to 2015. Philbin was also the offensive coordinator of the Green Bay Packers from 2007 to 2011, helping them win Super Bowl XLV over the Pittsburgh Steelers. Most recently, Philbin served as interim head coach of the Packers for the final four games of the 2018 season after serving as the offensive coordinator for the first part of the season.

Dennis Slamon

#23793

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (75 years)

Dennis Joseph Slamon , is an American oncologist and chief of the division of Hematology-Oncology at UCLA. He is best known for his work identifying the HER2/neu oncogene that is amplified in 25-33% of breast cancer patients and the resulting treatment trastuzumab.

William L. Thomas

#331154

Overall Influence

1967 - Present (56 years)

William L. Thomas is a circuit judge for Florida's Eleventh Judicial Circuit and former nominee for United States district judge for the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

Tom Rooney

#399469

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (53 years)

Thomas Joseph Rooney is an American politician who served as a U.S. Representative from Florida from 2009 to 2019. He represented from 2009 to 2013 and from 2013 to 2019. He is a member of the Republican Party.

John Astin

#171847

Overall Influence

1930 - Present (93 years)

John Allen Astin is an American actor and director who has appeared in numerous stage, television and film roles. He is best known for starring in The Addams Family , as patriarch Gomez Addams, reprising the role in the television film Halloween with the New Addams Family and the animated series The Addams Family .

Miles Prentice

#167590

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (81 years)

E. Miles Prentice, III is an attorney in New York City and owner of minor league baseball teams as well as the chairperson of the Center for Security Policy. Biography Prentice was born in New Jersey and received an AB from Washington & Jefferson College in 1964 and his law degree from the University of Michigan in 1967 and was admitted to the bar in New York in 1973. He is a partner at the law firm Eaton & Van Winkle LLP where his specialty is international and domestic commercial and financial law. His Eaton profile says he has extensive experience in the "acquisition of companies, formati...

Frederick E. Grine

#290973

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (71 years)

Frederick Edward Grine is an American paleoanthropologist. He is a Professor of anthropology and anatomical sciences at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He received his bachelor's degree from Washington & Jefferson College, and his Ph.D at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa in 1984.

Kenneth Melani

#339128

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (69 years)

Kenneth R. Melani is the former president and chief executive officer of Highmark, a health insurance company based in Pittsburgh and the largest health insurer in Pennsylvania. Before his abrupt departure from Highmark in 2012, he was one of the most powerful health insurance executives in the country. At his peak in 2012, Melani was in charge of a Highmark that was $14.6 billion company and had millions of policyholders, for which he was paid $4 million annually.

Kevin A. Ohlson

#353366

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (63 years)

Kevin Alan Ohlson is an American lawyer who serves as the chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces. Biography Ohlson was born in Holden, Massachusetts and raised in Sterling, Massachusetts, graduating from Wachusett Regional High School in 1978. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1982 from Washington and Jefferson College. He received a Juris Doctor in 1985 from the University of Virginia School of Law. He was commissioned as an officer in the United States Army in 1986, serving as a judge advocate and paratrooper. In 1990, he served in the Gulf War, earning a Bronze Star.

Ken Kashiwahara

#368382

Overall Influence

1940 - Present (83 years)

Ken Kashiwahara is a broadcast journalist. He was a correspondent for ABC from 1974 to 1998, and was one of the first Asian American journalists to appear on national television. Early life and education Kashiwahara was born in Waimea, Kauai on July 18, 1940. His parents were both teachers. When he was ten years old his family moved to Okinawa, but they returned to the United States and lived in Pennsylvania when Kashiwahara was a teenager. He later moved to Maryland and graduated from Bethesda Chevy Chase High School in 1958, then went on to attend Washington and Jefferson College. He left after two years after facing significant racism.

Robert I. Miller

#219089

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (60 years)

Robert Irving Miller is a United States Air Force lieutenant general who serves as the twenty-fourth Surgeon General of the United States Air Force and also serves as the Surgeon General of the United States Space Force.

Jon Soltz

#283567

Overall Influence

Jon Soltz served as a United States Army officer in the Iraq War and is chairman and co-founder of the veterans advocacy group VoteVets.org. Soltz served in both the Kosovo campaign in 2000 and later in Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003. Based on his service, Soltz became an outspoken critic of the execution of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Soltz deployed in 2011 as part of Operation New Dawn in Iraq.

Henry Wechsler

#193009

Overall Influence

Henry Wechsler is a lecturer at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and was principal investigator of the College Alcohol Study. Wechsler is noted for his studies of drinking by college students and for popularizing the term “binge drinking” to refer to the consumption of four alcoholic drinkss by a woman on an occasion and five alcoholic drinks by a man. Wechsler has brought attention to the large number of problems students who drink at this level produce for themselves, for others on campus, and for residents of neighborhoods where the colleges are located.

Sallie Updyke Mundy

#304739

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (61 years)

Sallie Updyke Mundy is an associate justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court and a former judge of the Pennsylvania Superior Court. Early life and education She was born in Elmira, New York and was raised in Tioga, Pennsylvania. In 1984, she graduated from Washington & Jefferson College. In 1987, she graduated from University of Pittsburgh School of Law.

Tom Squitieri

#434431

Overall Influence

1953 - Present (70 years)

Tom Squitieri is an American journalist, public speaker, and public relations specialist. Since January 2018, he has been the Pentagon correspondent for Red Snow News. Squitieri was an award-winning reporter with USA Today. After the September 11, 2001 attacks, he reported from the Pentagon as well as Iraq, Uzbekistan, Turkey and Italy. Other experience included presidential and congressional campaigns in 2000 and 1996, Capitol Hill, various Bill Clinton and political scandals, crime, drugs, arms smuggling and lead reporting on breaking news stories. Foreign assignments include an array of...

Harry E. Miller Jr.

Harry E. Miller Jr.

#444756

Overall Influence

1958 - Present (65 years)

Harry E. Miller Jr. is retired Army National Guard officer. A veteran of the Iraq War, he attained the rank of major general as commander of the 42nd Infantry Division, a position he held from 2013 to 2017.

M. Gerald Schwartzbach

#218471

Overall Influence

1944 - Present (79 years)

M. Gerald Schwartzbach is an American criminal defense attorney. Early life and career Schwartzbach, the youngest of three children, was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. He attended Washington & Jefferson College, playing on the basketball and baseball teams. He graduated from George Washington University Law School in 1969.

Joshua Stacher

#446986

Overall Influence

1975 - Present (48 years)

Joshua A. Stacher is an American political scientist and scholar of Middle East politics, authoritarianism, and social movements. Background and education Joshua Stacher received his undergraduate degree at Washington and Jefferson College in 1998, having majored in History and English. He subsequently studied comparative politics and Middle Eastern Islamist movements at The American University in Cairo, there receiving his master's in Political Science in 2002.

Irvin Ungar

#465978

Overall Influence

1948 - Present (75 years)

Irvin Ungar is an American former pulpit rabbi and antiquarian bookseller, considered the foremost expert on the artist Arthur Szyk. Ungar is credited as “the man behind the Szyk renaissance” who pulled Szyk “out of obscurity” through scholarship, exhibitions, and publications spanning nearly three decades.

Stephan Loewentheil

Stephan Loewentheil

#848576

Overall Influence

1950 - Present (73 years)

Stephan Loewentheil is an antiquarian and a rare book and photograph collector. He is the founder and president of the 19th Century Rare Book and Photograph Shop, located in New York, New York and Baltimore, Maryland. Over a career spanning four decades, Loewentheil "has excelled … in unearthing obscure bibliographic details leading to the acquisition of under-appreciated rarities, seminal documents and early historic photographic images." Loewentheil has been described as a "super-collector," whose clients include celebrities, heads of state, American presidents, and some of the most prominen...

Karen L. Valihura

#964757

Overall Influence

1963 - Present (60 years)

Karen L. Valihura is an American lawyer who serves as a justice of the Delaware Supreme Court. She was appointed on June 6, 2014. Prior to her appointment, Valihura was a partner at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, LLP.

Roger Goodell

#722212

Overall Influence

1959 - Present (64 years)

Roger Stokoe Goodell is an American businessman who is currently the commissioner of the National Football League . On August 8, 2006, Goodell was chosen to succeed retiring commissioner Paul Tagliabue. He was chosen for the position over four finalists; he won a close vote on the fifth ballot before being unanimously approved by acclamation of the owners. He officially began his tenure on September 1, 2006, just prior to the beginning of the 2006 NFL season. On December 6, 2017, the NFL announced that Goodell signed a new contract that would start in 2019. Commentators have described him as ...

Luke Ravenstahl

#784203

Overall Influence

1980 - Present (43 years)

Luke Robert Ravenstahl is an American politician who served as the 59th Mayor of Pittsburgh from 2006 until 2014. A Democrat, he became the youngest mayor in Pittsburgh's history in September 2006 at the age of 26. He was among the youngest mayors of a major city in American history.

John S. Reed

#610518

Overall Influence

1939 - Present (84 years)

John Shepard Reed is the former chairman of the New York Stock Exchange. He previously served as chairman and CEO of Citicorp, Citibank, and post-merger, Citigroup. He is the past chairman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's board of trustees.

John Musmanno

#498976

Overall Influence

1942 - Present (81 years)

John L. Musmanno is a senior judge of the Pennsylvania Superior Court. Musmanno was born in Stowe Township, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Washington & Jefferson College in 1963, where he was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and won the Henry Wilson Temple History Prize. He graduated from Vanderbilt University Law School in 1966, where he was an assistant editor of the Vanderbilt Law Review.

Melissa Hart

#513402

Overall Influence

1962 - Present (61 years)

Melissa Anne Hart is an American lawyer and politician. She was a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives from 2001 to 2007, representing western Pennsylvania's 4th congressional district. She was the first Republican woman to represent Pennsylvania at the federal level. Prior to her service in Congress, Hart served in the Pennsylvania Senate, where she chaired the finance committee. She was the first Republican woman elected to serve a full term in the Pennsylvania Senate in 1990 when she was 28 years old. In her first run for office, Hart defeated an incumbent in a senate district that included parts of Allegheny, Westmoreland and Armstrong counties.

Joe Szakos

#451322

Overall Influence

1954 - Present (69 years)

Joe Szakos is a community organizer and author. He was coordinator of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth from 1981 to 1993, and was the executive director of Virginia Organizing from 1994 to 2017. After stepping down from the directorship, he became the Lynchburg Chapter organizer until his retirement in November 2020.

David A. Steinberg

David A. Steinberg

#1028554

Overall Influence

1970 - Present (53 years)

David A. Steinberg is the founder and chief executive officer of Zeta Global, one of multiple successful companies that he has founded. Zeta Global is a big-data and artificial intelligence driven marketing company that integrates data, technology, and marketing technology, aiming to help brands acquire, grow and retain customers.

Scott Petri

#1102375

Overall Influence

1960 - Present (63 years)

Scott Petri is an American politician who was a member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives from the 178th Legislative District. He was the Chairman of House Urban Affairs and the House Ethics Committee. He also served as a member of the Liquor Control Committees. Petri served as executive director of the Philadelphia Parking Authority.

Stephen Kresovich

Stephen Kresovich

#697672

Overall Influence

1952 - Present (71 years)

Stephen Kresovich is a plant geneticist and the Coker Endowed Chair of Genetics in the Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences at Clemson University and professor in the School of Integrative Plant Science in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University. Since 2019 he has served as director of the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Crop Improvement.

Jim Christiana

#1139403

Overall Influence

1983 - Present (40 years)

James J. Christiana III is an American politician. He served as a Republican member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives from 2009 to 2019. The great-grandson of Italian immigrants, Christiana is a fourth-generation resident of Beaver County, Pennsylvania and a member of the First Presbyterian Church in Beaver, Pennsylvania. He graduated from Beaver High School in Beaver, Pennsylvania in 2002.

Walter Cooper

#399363

Overall Influence

1928 - Present (95 years)

Walter Cooper is an American scientist, humanitarian, activist, and educator. Primarily a research scientist, he was also heavily involved in civil rights work both in Rochester, New York and in Mali.

Paul C. Quinn

#830812

Overall Influence

Gretchen N Neigh

#1431949

Overall Influence

David Kier

#482831

Overall Influence

David A. Kier was the ninth Principal Deputy Director of the National Reconnaissance Office . He is a 1965 graduate of Washington & Jefferson College.

Chuck Heberling

#983957

Overall Influence

1925 - 2019 (94 years)

Charles Heberling was an American football official in the National Football League and Western Pennsylvania sports administrator. He was the referee for both the Hail Mary Game and The Drive. He was an alternate for the officiating crew for Super Bowl XXI. Heberling wore the number 46 for the major part of his NFL career.

Johnny Spiegel

#678968

Overall Influence

John E. Spiegel was an American football player, coach of football and basketball, and college athletics administrator. A native of Detroit, Michigan, Spiegel played at the halfback position for Washington & Jefferson College from 1913 to 1914. He was selected as a second-team All-American in 1913 and was the leading scorer in college football. In 1914, he was a consensus first-team All-American. From 1915 to 1916, Spiegel was the football coach, basketball coach, and athletic director at the University of Chattanooga. After World War I, Spiegel coached at Muhlenberg College from 1921 to ...

Eddie Wood

#807818

Overall Influence

Edward Wood was an early professional football player for the Latrobe Athletic Association, the Franklin Athletic Club and finally for the Canton Bulldogs of the "Ohio League". He also played on Dave Berry's Western Pennsylvania All-Star team, a collection of early football star players, that was designed to compete with the star-heavy Duquesne Country and Athletic Club on December 3, 1898 at Exposition Park in Pittsburgh. In 1902 he played in the first National Football League for the Philadelphia Phillies. He also played for Franklin when it won the 1903 World Series of Football over the Watertown Red & Black at Madison Square Garden.

Jesse J. White

#1656812

Overall Influence

1978 - Present (45 years)

Jesse J. White is a former attorney and former Democratic member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, representing the 46th District since 2007. His district included portions of Washington, Allegheny and Beaver Counties.

Farmer Burns

#958070

Overall Influence

1876 - Present (147 years)

James Joseph "Farmer" Burns was a major league baseball player who pitched for the St. Louis Cardinals in 1901. He had previously attended Washington and Jefferson College, where he was a strong starting pitcher in 1898 for their team "The Presidents," though he never graduated.

Aaron Pilkington

#2064906

Overall Influence

1991 - Present (32 years)

Aaron Michel Pilkington is the Republican state representative for District 69, which includes portions of Johnson and Pope counties in northwestern Arkansas. Pilkington is a graduate of Fairmont Senior High School in Fairmont, West Virginia, where he was elected class President. He obtained his undergraduate education at Washington & Jefferson College in Washington, Pennsylvania, where he was a member of the fraternity Delta Tau Delta. He also attended the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and graduated with a master's degree in health care administration. Pilkington serves on two ...

Chris Mosley

#1502407

Overall Influence

Chris Mosley is an American football coach who last served as an assistant offensive line coach with the Miami Dolphins of the National Football League . He has been the team's assistant offensive line coach since 2012.

James Smith

#545559

Overall Influence

James Smith served as Secretary of State of Kansas from 1879 to 1885. He graduated from Jefferson College in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania in 1857. He was a Republican.

Raymond Yong

#538747

Overall Influence

1929 - Present (94 years)

Raymond Yong, is a retired Canadian environmental engineer. His father, Yong Ngim Djin, was principal of Anglo-Chinese School, and he first studied in the United States at Washington & Jefferson College due to his godfather, who was a Methodist missionary. He started in medicine, but switched to physics. He became an important instructor at McGill University. He is also an authority on contaminated soil and has 60 patents. In 1985 he won the Izaak-Walton-Killam Award.

Cyrus Western

#1939003

Overall Influence

Cyrus Western is a Wyoming politician. Education Western earned a Bachelor's degree in environmental science from Washington & Jefferson College in 2012 and a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies in environmental science from Harvard University in 2016.

E. L. Alexander

#1283823

Overall Influence

Capt. S.M. or E. L. Alexander was an American football coach. He succeeded Herman G. Steiner as the head football coach Trinity College—now known as Duke University—in midseason in 1923, where the team had a record of 5–4.

Clark Schrontz

#977959

Overall Influence

Clark A. Schrontz was a professional American football player. In 1902 he won a championship in the first National Football League with the Pittsburgh Stars. A year later he was a member of the Franklin Athletic Club football team that was considered the "best in the world". He also won the 1903 World Series of Football, held at Madison Square Garden, with the Franklin Athletic Club.

Will McMillan

#1927765

Overall Influence

1944 - 2015 (71 years)

William George McMillan was an American actor, producer, and director. Early life McMillan was born on November 25, 1944, in Steubenville, Ohio to William Claude and Nellie McMillan. While attending Weir High School, he played both offense and defense for the football team that won the 1960 State Championship. McMillan attended Washington & Jefferson College where he received a BA degree. He attended Boston University where he received a Masters of Fine Arts.

Image Attributions