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,
#751
Alice Gorman
#51740
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (61 years)
Alice Gorman is an Australian archaeologist, heritage consultant, and lecturer, who is best known for pioneering work in the field of space archaeology and her Space Age Archaeology blog. Based at Flinders University, she is an expert in Indigenous stone tool analysis, but better known for her research into the archaeology of orbital debris, terrestrial launch sites, and satellite tracking stations. Gorman teaches modern material culture studies, cultural heritage management, and Australian stone tools. Gorman is also a founding member of the Archaeology, Science and Heritage Council of For...
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Heather Lechtman
#52806
Overall Influence
1935 - Present (90 years)
Heather Lechtman is an American materials scientist and archaeologist, and Director at the Center for Materials Research in Archaeology and Ethnology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She specializes in prehistoric technology of the Andean area of South America, and in particular metallurgy.
Go to Profile#753
Itziar Aretxaga
#135734
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (60 years)
Itziar Aretxaga Méndez is a Spanish and Mexican astrophysicist who works in Mexico as a researcher at the National Institute of Astrophysics, Optics and Electronics . Her research interests include galaxy formation and evolution, active galactic nuclei, starburstss, and supernovae.
Go to Profile#754
Cynthia Tse Kimberlin
#86230
Overall Influence
Cynthia Tse Kimberlin is an American ethnomusicologist. She is the executive director and publisher of the Music Research Institute and MRI Press, based in Point Richmond, California. Her primary area of expertise is the music of Africa, in particular Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Go to Profile#755
Teresa del Valle
#181116
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (88 years)
Teresa del Valle Murga is a Spanish anthropologist, best known for her work in the fields of gender studies and feminism in Spain, in her publications Mujer vasca. Imagen y realidad , Culturas oceánicas: Micronesia , Género y sexualidad , Gendered Anthropology , and Perspectivas feministas desde la antropología social . She was the recipient of a Emakunde Award for Equality in 2010.
Go to Profile#756
Anna Birgitta Rooth
#101283
Overall Influence
1919 - 2000 (81 years)
Anna "Anta" Birgitta Rooth was the first Swedish professor of ethnology at Uppsala University. She is known for her research into folklore, especially the Cinderella story. Early life and education Anna Birgitta Rooth was born on 15 May 1919, in Ängelholm, Sweden, to Hildegard Sofia Helena and Nore Valfrid Waldermarson. She had two brothers, Bertil and Bo Waldemarson. Rooth enjoyed reading as a child and at 19, gained a school-leaving certificate at Lunds privata elementarskola, allowing her to attend Lund University the same year.
Go to Profile#757
Melanie Giles
#157693
Overall Influence
Melanie Giles is a British archaeologist and academic, specialising in Iron Age Britain. She is a Professor in European Prehistory at the University of Manchester. Education Giles completed her BA in Archaeology and MA in Landscape Archaeology at the University of Sheffield. Her PhD, undertaken at the University of Sheffield was supervised by Mike Parker Pearson and John Barrett. She investigated the Iron Age landscapes of East Yorkshire. The thesis was titled Open-weave, close-knit' : archaeologies of identity in the later prehistoric landscape of East Yorkshire.
Go to Profile#758
Lyn Parker
#177660
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (69 years)
Lynette Parker is an Australian social and cultural anthropologist. She is an Emerita Professor and an elected fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. She has studied contemporary Indonesia and in particular Bali.
Go to Profile#759
Barbara Herrnstein Smith
#39300
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (93 years)
Barbara Herrnstein Smith is an American literary critic and theorist, best known for her work Contingencies of Value: Alternative Perspectives for Critical Theory. She is currently the Braxton Craven Professor of Comparative Literature and English and director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Science and Cultural Theory at Duke University, and also Distinguished Professor of English at Brown University.
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Véronique Dasen
#111987
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (68 years)
Véronique Dasen is a Swiss archaeologist and Professor in Classical Archaeology and Art History at the University of Fribourg. Her research is led in a multidisciplinary and anthropological perspective. Her research interests range from ancient iconography and material culture, the history of the body, of medicine and magical practices to gender studies, history of childhood, and ludic culture .
Go to Profile#761
Anna Pujol Puigvehi
#171729
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (78 years)
Anna Pujol Puigvehí . Historian, professor and archaeologist. Bachelor of Arts from the University of Barcelona , with the thesis “The Indiketes as the literary and archaeological sources”, Dr. summa cum laude in History from the Autonomous University of Barcelona with the doctoral thesis on the “Pre-Roman Population of the Northeast of the Iberian Peninsula. Genesis and development of Iberian culture in the Girona and south of France lands” . She has taught at the Autonomous University of Barcelona for over 15 years, and has been Associate professor of Archaeology and Ancient History of the UOC .
Go to Profile#762
Susan Cachel
#174928
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (76 years)
Susan Cachel is an American anthropologist, paleontologist, and researcher who specializes in primate evolution. In 2009, she was named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for her work in the field of primate evolution.
Go to Profile#763
Ewa Mazierska
#38936
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (61 years)
Ewa Mazierska is a reader in Contemporary Cinema, in the Department of Humanities of the University of Central Lancashire. Her publications include various articles in Polish and English and a number of monographs. She also co-edited Relocating Britishness .
Go to Profile#764
Heather Burke
#133630
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (59 years)
Heather Burke is an Australian historical archaeologist and a Professor in the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Flinders University. Early life and education Burke attended Mount Cotton State School and Marymount College . Burke obtained a bachelor's degree in archaeology from the University of New England in 1987, and a PhD from the same university in 1997. Her doctoral thesis investigated the expression of ideology through architectural style in the city of Armidale, New South Wales, during the period 1830–1930. It was published in 1999 as Meaning and Ideology in Historic...
Go to Profile#765
Helen Waterhouse
#126597
Overall Influence
1913 - 1999 (86 years)
Helen Thomas Waterhouse, Lady Waterhouse was a British archaeologist and classical scholar specialising in prehistoric Laconia . Early life and education Helen Thomas was born 5 March 1913 in Chaldon, England. Her father was Frederick William Thomas an Oxford Professor of Sanskrit and Oriental Languages. She was initially educated at home with a tutor, but later attended Roedean School, a public boarding school for girls.
Go to Profile#766
Mitra Emad
#138073
Overall Influence
Mitra C. Emad is an American anthropologist and Distinguished University Teaching Professor at the University of Minnesota Duluth. She is known for her works on cultural constructions of the human body. Emad is a recipient of the Horace T. Morse-University of Minnesota Alumni Association Award. She is also an established somatic and yoga educator.
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Mary Thygeson Shepardson
#176696
Overall Influence
1906 - 1997 (91 years)
Mary Thygeson Shepardson was an American anthropologist who researched and published extensively on the Navajo people of the American Southwest. Early life Shepardson was born in St. Paul, Minnesota on May 26, 1906, as the fourth child to suffragette Sylvie Thompson Thygeson and Nels Marcus Thygeson. Her parents were both described as educated and well-informed on social justice issues of the day, such as birth control, women's suffrage, and racial equality. Nels died when Shepardson was eleven, which was a devastating event for the family.
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Sarah Tarlow
#73553
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (58 years)
Sarah Tarlow is a British archaeologist and academic. As professor of historical archaeology at the University of Leicester, Tarlow is best known for her work on the archaeology of death and burial. In 2012, Tarlow was awarded the chair in archaeology at the University of Leicester.
Go to Profile#769
Solange Macamo
#96933
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (66 years)
Dr Solange Laura Macamo is lecturer of Archaeology and Heritage Management in the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, Eduardo Mondlane University, Mozambique. From 2010 to 2016 she was also the National Director for Cultural Heritage, Ministry of Culture and Tourism, Mozambique.
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Lucile Eleanor St. Hoyme
#139234
Overall Influence
1924 - 2001 (77 years)
Lucile Eleanor St. Hoyme was an American biological anthropologist who conducted research related to human variation, bioarcheology, and paleopathology. St. Hoyme served as an Assistant Curator in the Department of Anthropology at the National Museum of Natural History. St. Hoyme analyzed human remains excavated from the John Kerr Reservoir Basin using a new bioarcheological approach combining data from other disciplines. Beyond her work with the Smithsonian collections, St. Hoyme also worked on FBI forensic cases in the 1960s with National Museum of Natural History Anthropology Curator J. L...
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Catherine Frazee
#67977
Overall Influence
Catherine Frazee is a Canadian educator, activist, researcher, poet and writer. She is currently professor emerita in the School of Disability Studies at Toronto Metropolitan University . Prior to her retirement from Ryerson in 2010, she served for a decade as professor of distinction and as co-director of the Ryerson/RBC Institute for Disability Studies Research and Education. She is known for her role as Chief Commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission from 1989 to 1992. Her father was prominent Canadian banker Rowland Cardwell Frazee.
Go to Profile#772
Alison Keith
#97887
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (63 years)
Alison Keith is a classical scholar who is Professor of Classics and Women's Studies at the University of Toronto, where she has been a Fellow of Victoria University of Toronto since 1989. She is an expert on the relationships between gender and genre in Latin literature, and has published widely on topics including Latin epic poetry, Ovid, Propertius, and Roman dress.
Go to Profile#773
Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser
#178980
Overall Influence
1965 - Present (60 years)
Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser is a German archaeologist. She is a professor at the Johannes Gutenberg-University, Mainz and Director of the Monrepos Archaeological Research Centre and Museum for human behavioural Evolution of the Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum at Monrepos Castle in Neuwied, Germany.
Go to Profile#774
Elizabeth Simpson
#128148
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (78 years)
Elizabeth Simpson is an archaeologist, art historian, illustrator, and professor emerita at the Bard Graduate Center, New York, NY, where she taught for 25 years. She is director of the project to study, conserve, and publish the large collection of rare wooden artifacts from Gordion, Turkey, which date to the eighth century BC. In this capacity, she is a consulting scholar in the Mediterranean Section, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia. She received her PhD in classical archaeology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1985.
Go to Profile#775
Celia Applegate
#81648
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (66 years)
Celia Stewart Applegate is professor and William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of History and Affiliate Faculty of Musicology and Ethnomusicology at the Blair School of Music, both at Vanderbilt University. A scholar of modern German history, Professor Applegate has previously taught history at Smith College and the University of Rochester, where she served as director of the Susan B. Anthony Center for Women's Studies and held an Affiliate Faculty position in the Department of Musicology at the Eastman School of Music.
Go to Profile#776
Anna Marguerite McCann
#79606
Overall Influence
1933 - 2017 (84 years)
Anna Marguerite McCann was an American art historian and archaeologist. She is known for being an early influencer—and the first American woman—in the field of underwater archaeology, beginning in the 1960s. McCann authored works pertaining to Roman art and Classical archaeology, and taught both art history and archaeology at various universities in the United States. McCann was an active member of the Archaeological Institute of America, and received its Gold Medal Award in 1998. She also published under the name Anna McCann Taggart.
Go to Profile#777
Greta Arwidsson
#106734
Overall Influence
1906 - 1998 (92 years)
Greta Arwidsson was a Swedish archaeologist. Alongside other work, she is known for her study of the Valsgärde graves, published from the 1940s until the 1970s. Early life and education Greta Arwidsson was born on 5 July 1906, in Uppsala, Sweden. Her father's line traced to a soldier who died in the Battle of Napue in 1714; her great-grandfather, Adolf Ivar Arwidsson, was a historian and intellectual, her grandfather, Thorsten Adolf Arwidsson , a cartographer and naval officer, and her father, Ivar Arwidsson , a zoologist. Both parents worked at the Nordic Museum. Her mother, Anna Arwidsson ,...
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Arlene Stein
#81284
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (66 years)
Arlene Stein is an American sociologist and author best known for her writing about sex and gender, the politics of identities, and collective memory. She is Distinguished professor of sociology at Rutgers University where she directs the Rutgers University Institute for Research on Women. Stein has also taught at the University of Essex and at the University of Oregon.
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Fiona McHardy
#121773
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (55 years)
Fiona McHardy is a Professor of Classics and also the Head of History and Classics in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Roehampton. In 2003 she started work at Roehampton where she was responsible for building up the BA Classical Civilisation. Her research interests include ancient and modern Greek literature, folk poetry, anthropology and culture. She teaches modules on ancient Greek language, literature and culture.
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Anne Pattel-Gray
#82537
Overall Influence
Anne Pattel-Gray is an Aboriginal Australian theologian and author who is an expert on Black theology. She is a descendant of the Bidjara people of Queensland and was the first Aboriginal person to earn a PhD at the University of Sydney.
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Stephanie Wynne-Jones
#154931
Overall Influence
Stephanie Wynne-Jones is an Africanist archaeologist, whose research focuses on East African material culture, society and urbanism. She is Professor and Deputy Head of the Department of Archaeology at the University of York. She previously worked as assistant director of the British Institute in Eastern Africa and remains a Trustee and Member of the BIEA Governing Council. In 2016, Wynne-Jones was elected to Fellowship of the Society of Antiquaries of London. Wynne-Jones is one of the Core Group at the Danish National Research Foundation Centre of Excellence in Urban Network Evolutions , Aarhus University.
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Judith Herrin
#41451
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (83 years)
Judith Herrin is an English archaeologist, byzantinist, and historian of Late Antiquity. She was a Professor of Late Antique and Byzantine Studies and Constantine Leventis Senior Research Fellow at King's College London .
Go to Profile#783
Veronica Seton-Williams
#79995
Overall Influence
1910 - 1992 (82 years)
Veronica Seton-Williams FSA, was a British-Australian archaeologist who excavated in Egypt and the Near East, as well as in Britain. She studied history and political science at the University of Melbourne and then Egyptology and prehistory at University College London.
Go to Profile#784
Susan Hanley
#66519
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (86 years)
Susan B. Hanley is an American academic, author, Japanologist and Professor Emerita of History at the University of Washington. Career Hanley was a Professor of Japanese Studies and History at the University of Washington. Her primary area of academic research and writing is the material culture of Tokugawa society.
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E. C. L. During Caspers
#158429
Overall Influence
1934 - 1996 (62 years)
Elisabeth Christina Louisa During Caspers , known familiarly as Inez During Caspers, was a Dutch archaeologist. Education and career During Caspers was born in Amsterdam in 1934. She studied both Mesopotamian and South Asian archaeology at the University of Amsterdam, graduating with an MA in Sumerian and prehistoric archaeology in 1962. She then went on to the Institute of Archaeology in London, where she completed her PhD in 1969. Her thesis, supervised by Seton Lloyd, was on maritime trade between Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley in prehistory.
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Katherine Dunbabin
#130491
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (84 years)
Katherine Dunbabin is an archaeologist specialising in Roman art and Professor Emerita of Classics at McMaster University. Career Dunbabin studied at the University of Oxford, and was awarded her doctorate in 1970. Her thesis was titled Studies in the mosaic pavements of Roman North Africa. When Dunbabin started her DPhil there was little English-language research into Roman art. Her first book, The mosaics of Roman North Africa: studies in iconography and patronage with the Clarendon Press, was published in 1978. It was based on her doctoral research. Barry Cunliffe described it as 'a contrib...
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Trudy Griffin-Pierce
#176315
Overall Influence
1949 - 2009 (60 years)
Trudy Ann Griffin-Pierce was an American medical anthropologist, writer and artist. At the time of her death she was an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Arizona. Biography Trudy Ann Griffin was born 27 December 1949 in Spartanburg, South Carolina. She was of Catawba Indian heritage, and from a young age was fascinated with the Navajo people. Her father was in the U.S. Air Force, which saw the family move regularly. Her mother died when Griffin was 16.
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Kay Saunders
#92610
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (78 years)
Kay Elizabeth Bass Saunders is an Australian historian and Emeritus Professor at the University of Queensland. Earlyl life and education Saunders was born in Brisbane, Queensland in 1947. She graduated with a BA and PhD from the University of Queensland .
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Diane Austin-Broos
#126769
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (79 years)
Diane Joyce Austin-Broos is an anthropologist from Australia. She is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Sydney; her major research areas are Jamaica and Central Australia. Early life and education Austin-Broos was born in Melbourne in 1946, and attended Hartwell State School and the Methodist Ladies' College in Kew. She won a scholarship to the Australian National University, where she studied philosophy and oriental studies. She also complete a master's degree in philosophy, followed by a short time in a research position for Professor Henry Mayer at the University of Sydney. In 19...
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Lindsay Allason-Jones
#131952
Overall Influence
Lindsay Allason-Jones, is a British archaeologist and museum professional specialising in Roman material culture, Hadrian's Wall, Roman Britain, and the presence and role of women in the Roman Empire. She is currently a visiting fellow at Newcastle University.
Go to Profile#791
Judy Birmingham
#100987
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (93 years)
Jean Birmingham is a prominent English historical archaeologist, who has been based in Sydney, Australia, for most of her career. She is well known for her roles in the development of historical archaeology and cultural heritage management in Australia. In 2017 she was awarded a Member of the Order of Australia for her work in this field.
Go to Profile#792
Anne Strachan Robertson
#98675
Overall Influence
1910 - 1997 (87 years)
Anne Strachan Robertson FSA FSAScot FRSE FMA FRNS was a Scottish archaeologist, numismatist and writer, who was Professor of Roman Archaeology at the University of Glasgow and Keeper of the Cultural Collections and of the Hunterian Coin Cabinet at the Hunterian Museum. She was recognised by her research regarding Roman Imperial coins and as "a living link with the pioneers of archaeological research".
Go to Profile#793
Jane Desmond
#82452
Overall Influence
Jane C. Desmond is currently a Professor of Anthropology and Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Desmond is also a published author as well as the co-founder and director of the International Forum for U.S. Studies.
Go to Profile#794
Whitney Battle-Baptiste
#185627
Overall Influence
Whitney Battle-Baptiste is an American historical archaeologist of African and Cherokee descent. She is an associate professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Center at the University. Battle-Baptiste's research focuses on "how the intersection of race, gender, class, and sexuality look through an archaeological lens".
Go to Profile#795
Wendy Matthews
#186295
Overall Influence
Wendy Matthews is a British archaeologist and academic, specialising in Neolithic and Bronze Age Near Eastern archaeology and Geoarchaeology. She is an associate professor at the University of Reading since October 2000.
Go to Profile#796
Sarah Kenderdine
#87403
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (59 years)
Sarah Kenderdine is a professor of Digital Museology at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne , Switzerland, since 2017. She leads the laboratory for experimental museology , exploring the convergence of aesthetic practice, visual analytics and cultural data. Kenderdine develops interactive and immersive experiences for museums and galleries, often employing interactive cinema and augmented reality. She is a New Zealander and was born on the 2 January 1966 in Sydney.
Go to Profile#797
Aida Bueno Sarduy
#187655
Overall Influence
Aida Esther Bueno Sarduy is an Afro-Cuban anthropologist, documentary filmmaker and professor at New York University. Career Sarduy has a PhD in social anthropology from the Complutense University of Madrid. Her PhD thesis examined women's leadership in Afro-descendant religions like the Xangô religion in Recife. From 1999 to 2009 she was a researcher at the Center for Studies on Migration and Racism at Complutense University. She has continued to study the history of black women in South America, and taught at NYU, Hamilton College and Stanford.
Go to Profile#798
Karin Margarita Frei
#163602
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (52 years)
Karin Margarita Frei is an Argentinean-Danish archaeological scientist. She is a research professor in archaeometry at the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen. She has developed new methodologies for using isotopes to trace human and animal mobility, including the high time-resolution tracing technique for human hair and finger nails as well as ancient wool.
Go to Profile#799
Susan Harrington
#131747
Overall Influence
Susan K Harrington is an early-medieval archaeologist and Honorary Senior Lecturer at University College London. Career From 2006 to 2009 she was the research assistant on the Leverhulme Trust funded project 'Beyond the Tribal Hidage: Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in southern England AD 400-750'. She subsequently was part of the research team on the 'People and place: the making of the Kingdom of Northumbria AD 300-800' project at the University of Durham, also funded by the Leverhulme Trust.
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Tiina Manne
#186771
Overall Influence
Tiina Manne is an archaeologist and zooarchaeologist. She is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Queensland. Biography Manne completed her BSc in Archaeology and Zoology at James Cook University in 1997. She has a MSc in marine geology from the University of Miami and a PhD in anthropology from the University of Arizona. Her research focusses on the faunal assemblages and the earliest inhabitants of Australia. In January 2020 she warned that the unusually intense 2019–20 Australian bushfire season may have damaged thousands of Aboriginal sites across Australia.
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