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,
#901
Ruth Young
#189559
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Ruth Lorraine Young FHEA is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Leicester. Career Young completed undergraduate, MPhIl, and PhD studies at the University of Bradford. She was first appointed at the University of Leicester in 2000. She is a specialist in the archaeology of South Asia and the Middle East. She was elected as a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London on 1 January 2010.
Go to Profile#902
Ella Henry
#189873
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Ella Yvette Henry is a New Zealand Māori academic, affiliated with Ngātikahu ki Whangaroa, Ngāti Kuri, and Te Rārawa iwi. In June 2022 she was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to Māori, education and media. As of 2022 she is a full professor in the business school at Auckland University of Technology, specialising in Māori media.
Go to Profile#903
Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz
#59482
Overall Influence
Nancy Sorkin Rabinowitz is a classical scholar, specialising in ancient Greek literature and intersectional feminism. Career Sorkin Rabinowitz graduated from City College of New York and received her Ph.D. from University of Chicago for the thesis 'From force to persuasion: dragon battle imagery in Aeschylus' Oresteia' . Rabinowitz joined the faculty of Hamilton College in 1974, where she is Margaret Bundy Scott Professor of Comparative Literature. She is an expert on ancient Greek tragedy, feminist theory, and modern literature.
Go to Profile#904
Tereza Østbø Kuldova
#190995
Overall Influence
1985 - Present (41 years)
Tereza Østbø Kuldova is a social anthropologist and researcher at University of Oslo’s Department of Archaeology. She focuseds on social anthropology, critical luxury studies, criminology, critical management studies, organized crime, corruption, and more.
Go to Profile#905
Anne Klinck
#73243
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Anne Lingard Klinck was a Canadian academic and writer. Her work focused on the classics and was an authority on the female voice in lyric poetry. Early life Klinck was born in Chester, England on January 4, 1943 to British-Canadian father, Sydney Hibbert, as Anne Lingard Hibbert.
Go to Profile#906
Frances Healy
#171340
Overall Influence
Frances M. A. Healy is a British archaeologist and prehistorian, specialising in the British Neolithic and lithic technology. She has worked for Norfolk Archaeological Unit, English Heritage, Wessex Archaeology, and Oxford Archaeology. She has been a research associate at Newcastle University and Cardiff University, where she has been an honorary research fellow since 2007.
Go to Profile#907
Amy Malek
#92556
Overall Influence
Amy Malek , is an American assistant professor, scholar, and sociocultural anthropologist. She serves as the endowed Chair and Director in Iranian and Persian Gulf Studies at Oklahoma State University, Stillwater. Her work focuses on the migration, citizenship, memory, and culture in the Iranian diaspora. Malek is an Iranian-American.
Go to Profile#908
Karina Grömer
#190436
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Karina Grömer is an Austrian archaeologist known for her contribution to the study of archaeological textiles. She is the vice-head of the Department of Prehistory at the Natural History Museum Vienna in Austria.
Go to Profile#909
Omise'eke Natasha Tinsley
#165829
Overall Influence
Omise'eke Natasha Tinsley is Professor of Black Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Previously she was an Associate Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She is trained in literary critique, and does work in Caribbean Studies, Black Diaspora Studies, Gender and Women's Studies, and Pop Culture Studies. She is the author of Thiefing Sugar: Eroticism between Women in Caribbean Literature , and Ezili′s Mirrors: Imagining Black Queer Genders . She received the F.O. Matthiessen Visiting Professorship of Gender and Sexuality at Harvard for the 2018–2019 school year.
Go to Profile#910
Ellen Swift
#175976
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Ellen Swift is a British archaeologist and Professor of Roman Archaeology at the University of Kent. Professor Swift studied at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London for her BA, MA, and PhD.
Go to Profile#911
Judith McKenzie
#63914
Overall Influence
1957 - 2019 (62 years)
Judith Sheila McKenzie was an Australian archaeologist whose work primarily focused on the architecture of the ancient Middle East. At the time of her death, McKenzie was Associate Professor of Late Antique Egypt and the Holy Land at the University of Oxford and Director of the Manar al-Athar project, an open-access image archive of the Middle East. McKenzie was known in particular for her work on the architecture of Petra and Alexandria, having published lengthy monographs on each.
Go to Profile#912
Barbara Tsakirgis
#114464
Overall Influence
1954 - 2019 (65 years)
Barbara Tsakirgis was an American classical archaeologist with specialization in Greek and Roman archaeology, particularly of ancient Greek houses and households. She worked in the archaeological excavation sites in Sicily and Athens for her doctoral thesis from Princeton University on the subject of Hellenistic houses at Morgantina. Her thesis was published as The Domestic Architecture of Morgantina in the Hellenistic and Roman Periods . She taught at the Vanderbilt University's Department of Classical Studies and was an associate professor from 1992 to 2019.
Go to Profile#913
Carolyn Dewald
#69675
Overall Influence
Carolyn Dewald is an American classical scholar who is Professor Emerita of Classical Studies at Bard College. She is an expert on ancient Greek historiography, and the author of several books and articles focusing on the writings of Herodotus and Thucydides.
Go to Profile#914
Josine Blok
#73619
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Josine Henriëtte Blok is a Dutch classical scholar. She has been a professor of Ancient History and Classical Civilisation at Utrecht University since 2001 up until 2019. Blok was born in Oegstgeest. She attended the gymnasium and subsequently studied history at the University of Groningen between 1971 and 1978. In October 1991, she obtained her PhD at Leiden University under professor , with a thesis titled: "Amazones antianeirai. Interpretaties van de Amazonenmythe in het mythologisch onderzoek van de 19e en 20e eeuw en in archaïsch Griekenland". In 2001, Blok was appointed professor at Utr...
Go to Profile#915
Borka Dragojević-Josifovska
#172393
Overall Influence
1910 - 2004 (94 years)
Borka Dragojević-Josifovska, in Serbian: Борка Драгојевић-Јосифовска was a Bosnian archaeologist, museum curator, numismatist and philologist, who was Professor of Classical Philology at Ss. Cyril and Methodius University of Skopje, and who worked mainly on classical archaeology in North Macedonia.
Go to Profile#916
Louise Revell
#185665
Overall Influence
Louise Revell is a Roman archaeologist, currently associate professor in Roman Studies at the University of Southampton. Revell's research focuses on provincial archaeology of the Western Roman Empire.
Go to Profile#917
Tania Dickinson
#137155
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Tania Marguerite Dickinson is a British archaeologist specialising in early-medieval Britain. Dickinson undertook undergraduate study at St. Anne's College, Oxford and postgraduate study at the Institute of Archaeology . Her doctoral thesis, titled The Anglo-Saxon burial sites of the upper Thames region, and their bearing on the history of Wessex, circa AD 400-700, was supervised by Sonia Chadwick Hawkes and Christopher Hawkes .
Go to Profile#918
Maijastina Kahlos
#96174
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Maijastina Kahlos is a Docent of Latin and Roman literature at the University of Helsinki and a Life Member of Clare Hall, University of Cambridge. She specialises in migration and mobility in the late antique Mediterranean, everyday life in ancient Rome, and ancient religions.
Go to Profile#919
Emeline Hill Richardson
#106723
Overall Influence
1910 - 1999 (89 years)
Emeline Hurd Hill Richardson was an American classical archaeologist and Etruscan scholar. Hill was the daughter of William Hurd Hill and Emeleen Carlisle . She studied at Radcliffe College, receiving an A.B. in 1932 and an M.A. in 1935. In 1935/36 she studied with Bernard Ashmole at the University of London. She completed her Ph.D. in 1939 at Radcliffe College. From 1941 to 1949 she was on the faculty of Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts. In 1950, Emeline Hill Richardson held a stipend at the American Academy in Rome and was involved in the Cosa excavations. She married Lawrence Richardson in 1952.
Go to Profile#920
Rebecca Wanzo
#181127
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Rebecca Ann Wanzo is an American academic specializing in African-American literature and culture, critical race theory, fan studies, and feminist theory. She is a professor and chair of the women, gender, and sexuality studies department at Washington University in St. Louis. Wanzo's 2020 book, The Content of Our Caricature: African American Comic Art and Political Belonging, won the Eisner Award for Best Academic/Scholarly Work.
Go to Profile#921
Rebecca Sweetman
#107050
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (53 years)
Rebecca Jane Sweetman is an Irish classical scholar. She is Professor of Ancient History and Archaeology and the former Head of the School of Classics at the University of St Andrews. Sweetman is known in particular for her work on the archaeology of Roman and Late Antique Greece. Since September 2022, she has been Director of the British School at Athens.
Go to Profile#922
Willemijn Waal
#116281
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (51 years)
Willemijn J.I. Waal is a Dutch Hittitologist and Classicist. She is known especially for her work on Hittite administrative practice and the development of early scripts, including Luwian hieroglyphic and the Greek alphabet.
Go to Profile#923
Esther MacCallum-Stewart
#132301
Overall Influence
Esther MacCallum-Stewart is a British author and academic on games and sex, sexuality and gender in gaming as well as on the narrative of games. Biography Esther MacCallum-Stewart attended the University of Sussex where she completed her degrees from BA to doctorate. Though her doctorate thesis was on Popular Culture and the First World War MacCallum-Stewart has gone on to become the Associate Professor of Game Studies at Staffordshire University. MacCallum-Stewart researches how narratives in games are understood by the player as well as publishing articles on sex, sexuality, and gender in games.
Go to Profile#924
Barbara Craig
#134133
Overall Influence
1915 - 2005 (90 years)
Barbara Denise Craig was a British archaeologist, classicist, and academic, specialising in classical pottery. From 1967 to 1980, she was Principal of Somerville College, Oxford. Early life She was born on 22 October 1915 in Calcutta, British Raj. Her father was librarian of the Imperial Library of Calcutta . In 1920, she moved to London, England, with her mother and siblings; her father remained in India. She was educated at Haberdashers' Aske's School for Girls, a private school in Acton, London.
Go to Profile#925
Magdalena Midgley
#184082
Overall Influence
1952 - 2014 (62 years)
Magdalena Midgley was a British archaeologist, and Professor of the European Neolithic at the University of Edinburgh. She dedicated her archaeological career to teaching and researching early farming cultures of Continental Europe. She became known for her survey of the TRB culture , the first farming culture of the North European Plain and southern Scandinavia, which was published by Edinburgh University Press.
Go to Profile#926
Evelyn Lord Smithson
#170433
Overall Influence
1923 - 1992 (69 years)
Evelyn Lord Smithson was a noted twentieth-century scholar of classics and Classical archaeology and an expert on Bronze Age and Early Iron Age Greece. Evelyn Lord Smithson was educated at the University of Washington and at Bryn Mawr College where she took her Master's degree and her doctorate in Classical archaeology and ancient Greek in 1956. She was a student at the American School of Classical Studies in Athens from 1948 to 1950.
Go to Profile#927
Joan P. Alcock
#168086
Overall Influence
Joan Pilsbury Alcock FSA is an archeologist and historian and an Honorary Fellow of London South Bank University. She was elected as a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London on 3 March 1977, and is a member of the Guild of Food Writers.
Go to Profile#928
Judith Barringer
#167276
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Judith Barringer is an American classical archaeologist and Professor of Greek Art and Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh. She studies the archaeology, art and culture of ancient Greece from the Archaic to Hellenistic periods.
Go to Profile#929
Susanne Bickel
#116864
Overall Influence
1960 - Present (66 years)
Susanne Bickel is a Swiss Egyptologist. She studied Egyptology in Geneva and then worked at the French Institute of Oriental Archaeology in Cairo and the Swiss Institute of Egyptian Antiquity. She has worked as an archaeologist on multiple sites in Middle and Upper Egypt. Since 2000 she has been a lecturer at the University of Freiburg and since 2006, professor of Egyptology at the University of Basel where she is an expert on Ancient Egyptian deities and demons. Susanne Bickel's research focuses on religion and Egyptian archaeology, particularly the documentation of Egyptian temples. Bickel ...
Go to Profile#930
Gabrielle Démians d'Archimbaud
#178753
Overall Influence
1929 - 2017 (88 years)
Gabrielle Démians d'Archimbaud was a French archaeologist specialising in deserted medieval villages and religious buildings. She was a pioneer of the study of material culture in the Middle Ages and Professor emerita of History of Art.
Go to Profile#931
Michelle Alexander
#188103
Overall Influence
Michelle Alexander is a bioarchaeologist with an interest in multi-faith societies and is Senior Lecturer in Bioarchaeology at the University of York. Research Alexander specialises in the study of medieval diet through stable isotope analysis. She was part of the research team for the European Research Council funded project The Archaeology of Regime Change: Sicily in Transition, which explored the changes in population in medieval Sicily. She is part of the research team for the Urban Ecology Zanzibar project. She is project lead for the Faith in Food, Food in Faith Network funded by the Arts & Humanities Research Council.
Go to Profile#932
Elisabeth Ettlinger
#50161
Overall Influence
1915 - 2012 (97 years)
Elisabeth Ettlinger, was a German-born archaeologist and academic, who specialised in archaeology of the Roman provinces and Roman Switzerland. From 1964 to 1980, she taught at the University of Bern, having emigrated to Switzerland in the 1930s to escape Nazi Germany. Her research centred on Roman ceramics such as Terra Sigillata, and she co-founded Rei Cretariae Romanae Fautores, a learned society dedicated to Roman pottery: she was its secretary, vice-president and then served as its president from 1971 to 1980. From September 1963 to June 1964, she was a member of the Institute for Advan...
Go to Profile#933
Begoña Aretxaga
#191477
Overall Influence
1960 - 2002 (42 years)
Begoña Aretxaga was a Basque anthropologist known for her work on Northern Ireland and Basque country. She studied at the University of the Basque Country and Princeton University where she lectured. She also worked at Harvard University and near the end of her life she taught at the University of Texas at Austin.
Go to Profile#934
Pascale Ballet
#106731
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Pascale Ballet is a French Egyptologist, and a Professor of Art History and Archaeology of Antiquity at the University of Poitiers. The subject of her thesis obtained in June 1980 under the leadership of Jean Leclant was on terracotta figurines from Egypt and the Mediterranean in the Hellenistic and Roman times, in which she is an expert.
Go to Profile#935
Jacqueline M. Newman
#88003
Overall Influence
1932 - Present (94 years)
Jacqueline M. Newman is a professor emeritus at Queens College-CUNY, specializing in Chinese cuisine, history, gastronomy, and food culture. Considered a trailblazer in the field, Newman has authored numerous books on the subject of Chinese cuisine and is the editor-in-chief of the Flavor and Fortune, a periodical focusing on the science and art of Chinese cuisine. She has also served on the awards committee of James Beard Foundation and on Board of Directors of the Food Exhibition Museum in Suzhou, China.
Go to Profile#936
Cheryl Thompson
#187800
Overall Influence
Cheryl Thompson is a Canadian academic known for studying the Black beauty industry and blackface in Canada. She is an assistant professor at Toronto Metropolitan University in the school of performance.
Go to Profile#937
Amanda Villepastour
#156507
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Amanda Villepastour is an Australian ethnomusicologist and former professional musician. She is best known for being the keyboardist of the Australian new wave band Eurogliders between 1980 and 1987, and for her 21st-century research work and publications on Yorùbá music in Nigeria, and Afro-Cuban religious music in Cuba.
Go to Profile#938
Georgina Kleege
#116929
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Georgina Kleege is an American writer and a professor of English at University of California, Berkeley. Kleege was diagnosed as legally blind, with macular degeneration, at age 11. Kleege has written classic essays and memoirs in the field of disability studies on blindness and teaches a range of classes at Cal Berkeley with a specialization in creative writing and disability studies. She is best known for her autobiographical collection of essays in 1999 with her book titled Sight Unseen, where she compared her view of the world to the world's view of blindness. Her work often explores the r...
Go to Profile#939
Caroline Goodson
#135156
Overall Influence
Caroline Jane Goodson is an archaeologist and historian at the University of Cambridge, previously at Birkbeck College, University of London. In 2003 she won the Rome Prize for medieval studies of the American Academy in Rome. In archaeological work, Goodson is most closely associated with the Villa Magna site in Italy where she has been field director since 2006.
Go to Profile#940
Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow
#182652
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Ann Olga Koloski-Ostrow is an American archaeologist known for her studies of hydraulic engineering in the ancient world. She works at Brandeis University as a professor of classical studies, the Kevy and Hortense Kaiserman Endowed Chair in the Humanities, and co-director of graduate studies in Ancient Greek and Roman Studies.
Go to Profile#941
Barbara Kaim
#144281
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Barbara Kaim is a Polish archaeologist, professor at the Faculty of Archaeology University of Warsaw. Her research focuses on the Achaemenid, Parthian and Sasanian periods in Iran and Central Asia. Professional career Barbara Kaim studied at the Institute of Archaeology . Since 1977 she worked as a Research Assistant. After completing her PhD in 1983, she began working as an assistant professor in the Department of Near Eastern Archaeology at the same institute. She did her habilitation in 2003, working on the architecture of Kushan period, and became a professor in 2005. On 18 April 2013,...
Go to Profile#942
Lorna Piatti-Farnell
#88111
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
Lorna Piatti-Farnell is an academic in New Zealand who researches popular media and cultural history. She is professor of film and popular culture at Auckland University of Technology . Academic career Lorna Piatti-Farnell was born in 1980. She was educated at Loughborough University, Leicestershire, graduating in 2009 with a PhD. She was employed by De Montfort University and Bishop Grosseteste University prior to moving to New Zealand where she joined AUT in 2010, being promoted to full professor, effective 1 January 2020.
Go to Profile#943
Hannah Cobb
#137202
Overall Influence
Hannah C. Cobb is an archaeologist at the University of Manchester, noted for her work on pedagogy, post-humanist theory, and diversity and equality in archaeology. Education Cobb undertook her PhD research at the University of Manchester, completed in 2008.
Go to Profile#944
Meriel McClatchie
#189407
Overall Influence
Meriel McClatchie is an archaeologist specialising in archaeobotany. She is an associate professor at University College Dublin. Education McClatchie studied Archaeology and History at University College Cork, followed by a Masters degree also at University College Cork. McClatchie completed her PhD in 2009 at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London.
Go to Profile#945
Psyche Williams-Forson
#174102
Overall Influence
Psyche Williams-Forson is an American scholar and writer from Virginia. She is currently the associate professor and chair of American Studies at the University of Maryland. Education Williams-Forson, who is African-American, holds a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Maryland , which are also the fields and institutions related to her Master's work in . Additionally, she completed a certificate in Women's Studies . In 1997, she received her bachelor's degree in English and African-American Studies.
Go to Profile#946
Zena Kamash
#134456
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (49 years)
Zena Kamash FSA is a British Iraqi archaeologist and senior lecturer at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her research topics include water, food, memory, the Roman period in the Middle East and Britain.
Go to Profile#947
Marianne Hem Eriksen
#191642
Overall Influence
1985 - Present (41 years)
Marianne Hem Eriksen is a professor at the University of Leicester School of Archaeology and Ancient History and Principal Investigator for an ERC Starting Grant, “Body-Politics: Personhood, Sexuality and Death in Iron and Viking Age Scandinavia.” Eriksen’s research focuses on the politics of the body and its connection to later pre-history Scandanavian architecture.
Go to Profile#948
Emma LaRocque
#116743
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Emma LaRocque is a Canadian academic of Cree and Métis descent. She is currently a professor of Native American studies at the University of Manitoba. She is also a published poet, writing brief, imagist poems about her ancestral land and culture. LaRocque's works have critically engaged topics such as Indigenous identities, contemporary Indigenous literature, postcolonial literary criticism, decolonization and resistance, and Indigenous representation in Canadian history, literature, and popular culture.
Go to Profile#949
Dian Million
#87049
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Dian Million, a Tanana Athabascan, is an associate professor In the Department of American Indian Studies at the University of Washington. Education, career and service Million received her Master of Arts in Ethnic Studies in 1998 and her Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 2004. Million is an Associate Professor in American Indian Studies and an Affiliated faculty in Canadian Studies, the Comparative History of Ideas Program, and the English Department at the University of Washington. She currently serves as the Chair for the Department of American Indian Studies.
Go to Profile#950
Peggy Fairbairn-Dunlop
#93188
Overall Influence
Margaret Ellen Fairbairn-Dunlop is a Samoan-New Zealand academic. She is the first person in New Zealand to hold a chair in Pacific studies. Education Fairbairn-Dunlop studied at Victoria University of Wellington, graduating with a Master of Arts degree. She completed <big>a PhD at Macquarie University in Australia.</big>
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