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).
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List of the most influential female people in Anthropology,
#701
Helmi Järviluoma
#152925
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (65 years)
Helmi Järviluoma-Mäkelä is a Finnish sound, music, and cultural scholar and writer. She is a Professor of Cultural Studies at the University of Eastern Finland. As sensory and soundscape ethnographer, Järviluoma has developed the mobile method of sensobiographic walking. Her research and art spans the fields of sensory remembering, qualitative methodology , environmental cultural studies, sound art and fiction writing. Helmi Järviluoma was married to Finnish writer Matti Mäkelä .[in Finnish]
Go to Profile#702
Sherylyn Briller
#176414
Overall Influence
Sherylyn H. Briller is an American cultural anthropologist, who specializes in medical anthropology and applied anthropology. Briller is a professor of anthropology, a faculty associate for the Center on Aging and the Life Course , an affiliated faculty in the Critical Disabilities Studies Program, and an instructor for the Design and Innovation minor at Purdue University. Briller's research focuses on the cross-cultural study of health, aging, disability and end-of-life issues in Mongolia and various parts of the United States. She has completed work as a researcher and consultant for variou...
Go to Profile#703
Helen Loney
#117782
Overall Influence
Helen Loney is an archaeologist specialising in the study of prehistory. She is a course tutor in archaeology at Oxford University Department of Continuing Education. She has previously worked as Principal Lecturer in Archaeology and Heritage Studies at the University of Worcester and as Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of Glasgow .
Go to Profile#704
Amy Richlin
#162512
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (74 years)
Amy Ellen Richlin is a professor in the Department of Classics at the University of California Los Angeles . Her specialist areas include Latin literature, the history of sexuality, and feminist theory.
Go to Profile#705
Pearl Duncan
#90255
Overall Influence
Pearl Maud Duncan Booth was an Australian teacher, anthropologist and academic. A Gamilaraay woman, she was the first known tertiary-qualified Indigenous teacher in Australia. She was named a Queensland Great in 2008.
Go to Profile#706
Lola Romanucci-Ross
#159568
Overall Influence
1925 - 2017 (92 years)
Lola Romanucci-Ross was an American cultural anthropologist who has authored and co-authored a number of works on medical, social, and cultural anthropology, with fieldwork in Melanesia , rural Mexico, and her mother's home town in Italy. She was a long-time friend and collaborator of Margaret Mead, having done fieldwork with her in Manus, and later worked with her then-husband Theodore Schwartz on a team of social science researchers under the guidance of Erich Fromm in rural Mexico.
Go to Profile#707
Deb Verhoeven
#102175
Overall Influence
Deb Verhoeven is currently the Canada 150 Research Chair in Gender and Cultural Informatics at the University of Alberta. Previously she was Associate Dean of Engagement and Innovation at the University of Technology Sydney, and before this she was Professor of Media and Communication at Deakin University. Until 2011 she held the role of director of the AFI Research Collection at RMIT. A writer, broadcaster, film critic and commentator, Verhoeven is the author of more than 100 journal articles and book chapters. Her book Jane Campion published by Routledge, is a detailed case study of the com...
Go to Profile#708
Anne Salmond
#146005
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (80 years)
Dame Mary Anne Salmond is a New Zealand anthropologist, environmentalist and writer. She was New Zealander of the Year in 2013. In 2020, she was appointed to the Order of New Zealand, the highest honour in New Zealand's royal honours system.
Go to Profile#709
Jo McDonald
#169393
Overall Influence
Dr Josephine McDonald is an Australian archaeologist and Director of the Centre for Rock Art Research + Management at the University of Western Australia. McDonald is primarily known for her influence in the field of rock art research and her collaborative research with Australian Aboriginal communities.
Go to Profile#710
Jodie Lewis
#117816
Overall Influence
Jodie Lewis is a British archaeologist specialising in the study of prehistory. She is a lecturer at the University of Bradford. She was elected as a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 2015. Before joining Bradford in 2022, Lewis lectured at the University of Wales, Bangor, the University of West of England, and the University of Worcester. She is a council member of The Prehistoric Society.
Go to Profile#711
Salima Hashmi
#15680
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (83 years)
Salima Hashmi is a Pakistanii painter, artist, former college professor, anti-nuclear weapons activist and former caretaker minister in Sethi caretaker ministry. She has served for four years as a professor and the dean of National College of Arts. She is the eldest daughter of the renowned poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz and his British-born wife Alys Faiz.
Go to Profile#712
Amara Thornton
#93330
Overall Influence
Amara Thornton is a historian of archaeology. Her work focuses on British archaeologists in the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She situates archaeology within its broader historical context, including the history of tourism, the history of publishing and popular media, the history of education, government policies and women's history. She is an Honorary Research Associate at UCL.
Go to Profile#713
Sally Kate May
#117384
Overall Influence
Sally Kate May, usually cited as Sally K. May, is an Australian archaeologist and anthropologist. She is an Associate Professor of Archaeology and Museum Studies at the University of Adelaide, Australia. She is a specialist in Indigenous Australian rock art and Australian ethnographic museum collections.
Go to Profile#714
Wilhelmina Feemster Jashemski
#50187
Overall Influence
1910 - 2007 (97 years)
Wilhelmina Mary Feemster Jashemski was an American scholar of the ancient site of Pompeii, where her archaeological investigations focused on the evidence of gardens and horticulture in the ancient city. She is remembered for her contributions to archaeobotany at Pompeiian sites, as she developed methods for preserving the remains of roots from antiquity, known as root casting.
Go to Profile#715
Rachel Swallow
#104947
Overall Influence
Rachel Swallow is an archaeologist specialising in the study of landscapes and castles. She was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 2018. Swallow studied at Birmingham Polytechnic and the University of Liverpool before completing a PhD at the University of Chester in 2015. She is visiting research fellow and guest lecturer at the University of Chester and honorary fellow at the University of Liverpool.
Go to Profile#716
Pamela Marshall
#110484
Overall Influence
Pamela Marshall is an archaeologist and historian specialising in the study of castles. Marshall was elected as a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 2007. She worked at the University of Nottingham, teaching in the departments of archaeology and continuing education until her retirement. Marshall's research on castles has examined castles in England and France, as they had a shared castle culture, and is an authority on great towers. Between 2000 and 2014, Marshall was chair/secretary of the Castle Studies Group and is Comité Permanent of the Colloques Château Gaillard, a bia...
Go to Profile#717
Sabine Strasser
#181406
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (63 years)
Sabine Strasser is an Austrian social anthropologist who specializes in migration and gender issues. She evaluates the political nature of transnational relationships, particularly with regard to diversity and multiculturalism. She was one of the first researchers hired when the University of Vienna's founded its Inter-University Coordination Center of Women's Studies in 1993. She has taught at the University of Vienna and the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey. Since 2013, she has served as a professor at the University of Bern.
Go to Profile#718
Susan Pfeiffer
#183968
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (78 years)
Susan Pfeiffer is an American anthropologist. In 2019 she was named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Life She graduated from University of Toronto, and University of Iowa. She taught at University of Toronto, and George Washington University. She is a research associate at the University of Cape Town.
Go to Profile#719
Lisa Nakamura
#14980
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Lisa Nakamura is an American professor of media and cinema studies, Asian American studies, and gender and women’s studies. She teaches at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where she is also the Coordinator of Digital Studies and the Gwendolyn Calvert Baker Collegiate Professor in the Department of American Cultures.
Go to Profile#720
Kristín Loftsdóttir
#178572
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (57 years)
Kristín Loftsdóttir is a professor in anthropology at the University of Iceland. Kristín has organized and been part of diverse research projects. Examples include research on racism, colonialism, whiteness, precarious migrants, crisis, and nationalism. Kristín has also conducted research relating to the tourism industry, development cooperation and masculinity. Kristín has done research in Europe , as well as West Africa . Kristín's writings have also appeared in many scholarly journals and chapters in books. Kristín has written three monographs and two novels and edited six books with other...
Go to Profile#721
Holly Pittman
#172929
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (78 years)
Holly Pittman is a Near Eastern art historian and archaeologist, and an expert in Near Eastern glyptic art. She is the Bok Family Professor in the Humanities and a Professor in the History of Art Department of the University of Pennsylvania and serves as a curator in the Near East Section of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Before joining the University of Pennsylvania, she was a curator of Ancient Near Eastern Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1974 to 1989. Since 1972, she has conducted archaeological excavations throughout the Middle East, including projects in Syria, Turkey, Cyprus, Iran, and Iraq.
Go to Profile#722
Valerie Maxfield
#95316
Overall Influence
Valerie Maxfield FSA is a Roman archaeologist and emeritus Professor of Archaeology at the University of Exeter. She is a specialist in the archaeology of the Roman army and frontiers, and edited the Proceedings of the Devon Archaeological Society until December 2020.
Go to Profile#723
Lydia T. Black
#112473
Overall Influence
1925 - 2007 (82 years)
Lydia T. Black was an American anthropologist. She won an American Book Award for Russians in Tlingit America: The Battles of Sitka, 1802 And 1804. She also received a Historian of the Year award from the Alaska Historical Society.
Go to Profile#724
Agnes Hsu-Tang
#35185
Overall Influence
Agnes Hsin Mei Hsu-Tang is a Taiwan-born American archaeologist and art historian. On October 19, 2021, she became the first person of Asian heritage to be elected board chair of one of the oldest historical institutions in America, the New-York Historical Society, founded in 1804. She is chairwoman of the New-York Historical Society board of trustees and Co-chair of The Met Museum's Objects Conservation Visiting Committee. She is a distinguished consulting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Hsu-Tang works in cultural heritage protection and rescue and has advised UNESCO and the U.S.
Go to Profile#725
Evelyn Blackwood
#184434
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (75 years)
Evelyn Blackwood is an American anthropologist whose research focuses on gender, sexuality, identity, and kinship. She was awarded the Ruth Benedict Prize in 1999, 2007 and 2011. Blackwood is an emerita professor of anthropology at Purdue University.
Go to Profile#726
Wendy Beck
#171296
Overall Influence
Wendy Beck is an Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of New England in archaeology and cultural heritage. Biography Beck grew up in Melbourne. She graduated from the University of Melbourne with a BSc in microbiology and biochemistry in 1979. Beck turned her attentions to archaeology after attending the Victorian Archaeological Survey Summer School in 1978–1979 and received a PhD from La Trobe University in 1986 on the subject of Technology, Toxicity and Subsistence: A Study of Australian Aboriginal Plant Food Processing. During her postgraduate research, Beck conducted fieldwork in ...
Go to Profile#727
Penny Bickle
#117734
Overall Influence
Penny Bickle is Senior Lecturer in Archaeology at the University of York and her research focuses on daily routine in the Neolithic period. Research Bickle's research focuses on life in the Neolithic period. She is Principal Investigator for the Counter Culture project, which investigates social diversity in central Europe across one thousand years of the Neolithic period. She is an adviser on Consuming Prehistory project, which examines food consumption at Stonehenge. She was featured on BBC Radio 3 discussing the importance that finds of pig bones could have for the site. Another area of interest for Bickle is the role that dairy played in prehistoric diet.
Go to Profile#728
Galina Pugachenkova
#84777
Overall Influence
1915 - 2007 (92 years)
Galina Anatolevna Pugachenkova was a Soviet archaeologist and art historian, regarded as a founder of Uzbek archaeology and central to the progression of archaeology and art history under Soviet regimes. Her work has contributed greatly to the register of surviving buildings in Central Asia and in many cases was the first register of traditional surviving buildings. G. A. Pugachenkova directed a branch of the archaeological expedition of southern Turkmenistan from 1946 to 1961, and of the Uzbek historical-artistic expedition from 1959 to 1984.
Go to Profile#729
Carolyn Hamilton
#168162
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (67 years)
Carolyn Hamilton is a South African anthropologist and historian who is a specialist in the history and uses of archives. She is National Research Foundation of South Africa chair in archive and public culture at the University of Cape Town.
Go to Profile#730
Cristina Rocha
#83276
Overall Influence
Cristina Rocha is a Brazilian-Australian Professor of anthropology at Western Sydney University. She works at the intersection between globalisation, migration and religion. She has written on Buddhism, New Age spirituality and most recently on pentecostalism.
Go to Profile#731
Olga Najera-Ramirez
#169155
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (70 years)
Olga Najera-Ramírez is an American anthropologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She has published academic works in the field of Mexican culture. Since 1996, she has served as faculty advisor to Grupo Folklórico Los Mejicas.
Go to Profile#732
Lina Fruzzetti
#171400
Overall Influence
Lina Fruzzetti is an American cultural anthropologist and documentary filmmaker. Since 1975, she has been a professor of anthropology at Brown University in the United States. Apart from having published ethnographic studies about rural communities and gender relations in East Africa, India and Tanzania, she is the author of several ethnographic films. These films were written and co-directed with her husband, Ákos Östör, cultural anthropologist and professor emeritus of anthropology at Wesleyan University. Since 2016 Fruzzetti is also a Fellow at the Jawaharlal Nehru University Institute for ...
Go to Profile#733
Lisa Rofel
#185319
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (72 years)
Lisa Rofel is an American anthropologist, specialising in feminist anthropology and gender studies. She received a B.A. from Brown University, followed by an M.A. and Ph.D. from Stanford University, and is currently a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Rofel's publications include Desiring China: Experiments in Neoliberalism, Sexuality, and Public Culture, and Other Modernities: Gendered Yearnings in China after Socialism.
Go to Profile#734
Rebecca Jones
#117354
Overall Influence
Rebecca Jones is Head of Archaeology and World Heritage at Historic Environment Scotland. Career Jones studied for an undergraduate degree in Ancient History and Archaeology at the University of Newcastle. In 1999-2000 she worked at Aberystwyth University with Jeffrey Davies, which resulted in the publication of the volume Roman Camps in Wales and the Marches in 2006. Jones completed her PhD at the University of Glasgow in 2006 entitled "The temporary encampments of the Roman army in Scotland ", supervised by Bill Hanson. Prior to her role at Historic Environment Scotland, Jones worked for the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland.
Go to Profile#735
Sue O'Connor
#109739
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (25 years)
Sue O'Connor is an Australian archaeologist and Distinguished Professor in the School of Culture, History & Language at the Australian National University. Her research focuses primarily on the evidence of Pleistocene settlement and early human migration in the Indo-Pacific region.
Go to Profile#736
Corinne Debaine-Francfort
#43788
Overall Influence
Corinne Debaine-Francfort is a French archaeologist and sinologist, a researcher at the CNRS specialised in the archaeology on Eastern Central Asia and in the protohistory of north-west China. Career Debaine-Francfort has been a Doctor of Far Eastern studies at Paris Diderot University since 1989 and research director at CNRS since 1995. She is a member of a team carrying out research on Central Asia. She has taken part in various archaeological expeditions in this region, and in the first Sino-foreign excavation to be authorized by China since 1949. Since 1995 she has been co-director of the Franco-Chinese archaeological mission to Sinkiang.
Go to Profile#737
Aleksandra McClain
#119047
Overall Influence
Aleksandra McClain is an archaeologist who specialises in church archaeology and the study of the Middle Ages. She is editor of the journal Medieval Archaeology, and assistant editor of Church Archaeology. McClain joined the University of York, where she is a senior lecturer, in 2008; she completed her doctorate at the same university in 2005.
Go to Profile#738
Rosemary Cramp
#32659
Overall Influence
1929 - 2023 (94 years)
Dame Rosemary Jean Cramp, was a British archaeologist and academic specialising in the Anglo-Saxons. She was the first female professor appointed at Durham University and was Professor of Archaeology from 1971 to 1990. She served as president of the Society of Antiquaries of London from 2001 to 2004.
Go to Profile#739
Jane Grenville
#68689
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (67 years)
Jane Clare Grenville, is a British archaeologist and academic, specialising in the archaeology of medieval buildings. Her early career was in field archaeology, heritage, and building conservation. In 1991, she joined the University of York as a lecturer in archaeology. She served as Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Students from 2007 to 2015 and Deputy Vice-Chancellor from 2012 to 2015: she was acting Vice-Chancellor in 2013.
Go to Profile#740
Eve MacDonald
#102833
Overall Influence
Eve MacDonald is a Canadian classicist and archaeologist who specialises in social history. She is a Lecturer in Ancient History at Cardiff University. MacDonald previously worked at the Universities of Edinburgh and Reading. In 2015 she published Hannibal: A Hellenistic Life with Yale University Press.
Go to Profile#741
Rachel Pope
#118021
Overall Influence
Rachel Pope FSA is an archaeologist specialising in Iron Age Europe. She is Reader in European Prehistory at the University of Liverpool. Education Pope undertook undergraduate and postgraduate degrees at Durham University. Her PhD thesis was entitled "Prehistoric Dwelling: circular structures in north and central Britain c 2500 BC - AD 500", was awarded in 2003, and funded partly through support provided by the British Federation of Women Graduates and St Mary's College.
Go to Profile#742
Negar Mottahedeh
#66847
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (57 years)
Negar Mottahedeh is a cultural critic and film theorist specializing in interdisciplinary and feminist contributions to the fields of Middle Eastern Studies and Film Studies. Early life She is known for her work on Iranian Cinema, but has also published on the history of reform and revolution, on `Abdu'l-Baha's vision of human solidarity and peace in the 20th Century, on Bábism, Qajar history, performance traditions in Iran, the history of technology, visual theory, Majid Tavakoli and the Men in Scarves Movement , and the role of social media in the 2009–2010 Iranian election protests. With th...
Go to Profile#743
Lisa Lodwick
#180162
Overall Influence
1988 - 2022 (34 years)
Lisa Ann Lodwick was a British archaeologist who studied charred, mineralised and waterlogged macroscopic plant remains, and used carbon and nitrogen stable isotope analysis to understand the crop husbandry practices of the ancient Romans.
Go to Profile#744
Ana Mariella Bacigalupo
#56701
Overall Influence
Ana Mariella Bacigalupo is a Peruvian anthropologist. She is a full professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo and has previously taught throughout the USA and in Chile. Her research primarily focuses on the shamans or machis of the Mapuche community of Chile, and the ways shamanic practices and beliefs are affected by and influence communal experiences of state power, mythical history, ethics, gender, justice, and identity.
Go to Profile#745
Elizabeth Reitz
#180328
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (79 years)
Elizabeth Jean "Betsy" Reitz is a zooarchaeologist and Professor Emerita in the Georgia Museum of Natural History and the Department of Anthropology at the University of Georgia. She was born in 1946 in Lake Alfred, Florida. She attended Florida Presbyterian College from 1966 to 1967. She received her BA , MA , and her PhD in Anthropology from the University of Florida. Her dissertation was directed by Elizabeth Wing. In 2012, she was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and in 2014, she was named to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She was t...
Go to Profile#746
Sharon Stocker
#70175
Overall Influence
1901 - Present (124 years)
Sharon Stocker is an American archaeologist who is best known, along with her husband, archaeologist Jack L. Davis, for leading an international team of researchers who discovered a previously undisturbed tomb of a Bronze Age warrior in southwest Greece. The 3500 year old intact grave was named the Griffin Warrior Tomb by the research team during the initial excavation in May 2015.
Go to Profile#747
Kathryn B. H. Clancy
#179206
Overall Influence
Kathryn Bridges Harley Clancy is an American biological anthropologist who specialises in reproductive health. She is Associate Professor at the University of Illinois, in the Department of Anthropology. Her additional research and policy advocacy work focuses on sexual harassment in science and academia.
Go to Profile#748
Himanshu Prabha Ray
#129251
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (78 years)
Himanshu Prabha Ray is an Indian Sanskrit scholar, historian, and archaeologist. Her interests areas are marine archaeology, history, and culture of South Asia. Ray is a recipient of the Anneliese Maier research award of the Humboldt Foundation for collaborative research with the Distant Worlds Programme and an Honorary Professor of the Distant Worlds Programme, Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, Germany. She has also served as a professor in the Centre for Historical Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, India. Ray was appointed as the Chairperson of the National Monument...
Go to Profile#749
Catriona Kelly
#61694
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (66 years)
Catriona Helen Moncrieff Kelly, FBA is a British academic specialising in Russian culture. From 1996 to 2021, she was Professor of Russian at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of New College. In 2021, she was elected senior research fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge and honorary professor of the University of Cambridge.
Go to Profile#750
Mina Weinstein-Evron
#171665
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (76 years)
Mina Weinstein-Evron is an Israeli archaeologist. She is a professor of archaeology at University of Haifa. Evron joined the faculty at University of Haifa as the head of the department of archaeology in 1991. She researches the prehistory of the Levant and Old World, palynology of the Eastern Mediterranean and Old World, the Quaternary period, and the agricultural revolution, including food production and sedentism. Evron completed a B.A. in social work, cum laude, at Bar-Ilan University in 1973. She earned a B.A. in archaeology and prehistory, cum laude, at Tel Aviv University . In 1976, she earned an M.A.
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