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,
#1001
Suzanne Frey-Kupper
#179642
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Suzanne Frey-Kupper is a classical archaeologist and numismatist from Switzerland, who is Professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Warwick. She specialises in the study of Greek, Roman and Punic coinage, in particular examining their role in historical processes and as social agents.
Go to Profile#1002
Paola Pruneti
#177754
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Paola Pruneti , Italian papyrologist and palaeographer. Pruneti worked at the University of Florence. She is a member of the Editor Committee of Analecta Papyrologica, a journal edited by the Department of Philology and Linguistic of the University of Messina.
Go to Profile#1003
Anne Rasmussen
#120117
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Anne K. Rasmussen is an American educator and ethnomusicologist. Much of her research focuses on Arab music in the US and Islamic ritual and performance. She has been the director of the William & Mary Middle Eastern Music Ensemble since 1994. Rasmussen was named the William M. and Annie B. Bickers Professor of Middle Eastern Studies in 2014.
Go to Profile#1004
Consuelo Mata Parreño
#187908
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Consuelo Mata Parreño is a Spanish Teacher who specialises in Iberian material culture. She is currently the head teacher of the Department of Archaeology at the University of Valencia. Notable work Mata, along with Helena Bonet Rosado and Joan Bernabeu Auban, published early work on the organisation of Iberian polities in the Valencian Community, arguing for hierarchical relationships between oppida in region.
Go to Profile#1005
Céline Bon
#192243
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (43 years)
#1006
Zeynep Ahunbay
#83302
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Zeynep Ahunbay is a leading Turkish scholar of antiquities. Biography Dr. Ahunbay was born in Ünye, Ordu Province, a small town in the Black Sea region of Turkey. She received her PhD in architectural history in 1976 from Istanbul Technical University, where in 1988 she became a professor of Architectural History and Preservation.
Go to Profile#1007
Froma Zeitlin
#41198
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Froma I. Zeitlin is an American Classics scholar. She specializes in ancient Greek literature, with particular interests in epic, drama and prose fiction, along with work in gender criticism, and the relationship between art and text in the context of the visual culture of antiquity. Zeitlin's work on establishing new approaches to Greek tragedy has been considered particularly influential.
Go to Profile#1008
Inés Talamantez
#110119
Overall Influence
Inés M. Talamantez was an ethnographer and scholar of religion. She was professor of religious studies at University of California, Santa Barbara . She was an expert on Native American religion and philosophy.
Go to Profile#1009
Friederike Fless
#79792
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (62 years)
Friederike Fless is a German classical scholar and archaeologist. In 2003, she was appointed professor of classical archaeology at the Free University of Berlin. In March 2011, she became the first woman to be appointed president of the German Archaeological Institute where she is responsible for up to 300 digs and other projects per year. For her outstanding contribution to science and science management, in November 2014 she received an honorary doctorate from the Humboldt University of Berlin.
Go to Profile#1010
Gertrud Pätsch
#69568
Overall Influence
1910 - 1994 (84 years)
Gertrud Pätsch was a German ethnologist and philologist, who rendered service in the area of Kartvelian studies. In 1937 she graduated in Munster with a degree in the Old Georgian language. After the Second World War she left the western sector of Germany for East Berlin, where she earned a habilitation at the Humboldt University of Berlin in Indonesian linguistics. She taught in Berlin until she moved to the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena in 1960, where she founded the Kartvelologian faculty. After her retirement she worked for two years at the Tbilisi State University in Georgia. She published books and many articles in journals, such as Bedi Kartlisa.
Go to Profile#1011
Antonia Syson
#136696
Overall Influence
1973 - 2018 (45 years)
Antonia Jane Reobone Syson was a British-American classical scholar specialising in the study of Virgil's Aeneid. Early life Antonia was born in Botswana whilst her father, John, was private secretary to the president, Sir Seretse Khama and her mother, Lucy, was undertaking research on rural development for the United Nations. The Sysons returned to the UK in 1973 where Antonia attended Hungerford primary school and Camden School for Girls. In 1991 Antonia went to Magdalen College, Oxford to study Classics under Oliver Taplin before, in 1995, taking her PhD in Classics at the University of California, Berkeley.
Go to Profile#1012
Victoria Whitworth
#136079
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Victoria Whitworth is a British writer, archaeologist and art historian. Her published writings, which focus on Britain in the later first millennium AD, include novels, academic works and a memoir.
Go to Profile#1013
Sunhild Kleingärtner
#172985
Overall Influence
1974 - Present (52 years)
Sunhild Kleingärtner is a German historian and archaeologist, specialising in maritime history and maritime archaeology. Career Kleingärtner was born in Wolfsburg, and began her studies at the University of Kiel in 1994. Her research focused on prehistoric archaeology, classical archaeology and art history. In 2000 she gained a Master of Arts degree, and thereafter worked as a research assistant at the Kiel Institute of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Archaeology , where she took over the management of terrestrial and subaquatic excavations. In 2004 Kleingärtner gained her PhD from the University of Kiel, with a study of the archaeological finds at Hedeby harbour .
Go to Profile#1014
Gertrude Eyifa-Dzidzienyo
#188609
Overall Influence
Gertrude Eyifa-Dzidzienyo is the first Ghanaian woman to hold a PhD in archaeology. She currently lectures at department of archaeology and heritage studies at University of Ghana. Her research interest are centered on the interrelationship between archaeological findings and gender subjects, particularly women in Ghana. In 2017, she completed her PhD thesis on Archaeology and Heritage Management Practices in Ghana: Assessment of Tengzug Heritage Preservation and Development.
Go to Profile#1015
Alicia Daneri
#68623
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Alicia Daneri Rodrigo is an Argentine Egyptologist who earned a doctorate at the Universidad de Buenos Aires. Daneri graduated in History at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata. She completed a Master's Degree in Egyptology at the University of Toronto, Canada, and later a Doctorate at the Universidad de Buenos Aires. She was Professor of Ancient Near East history at the Universidad de la Plata and Buenos Aires. She has been a researcher at CONICET, deputy director of the Egyptology Studies Program and director of the Department of Egyptology at the Instituto Multidisciplinario de Historia y Ciencias Humanas .
Go to Profile#1016
Ailsa Mainman
#152991
Overall Influence
Ailsa Jean Mainman is a British archaeologist and pottery specialist. Career Mainman completed her PhD at the University of Sheffield and is now a research associate at the University of York. She is a former assistant director of York Archaeological Trust.
Go to Profile#1017
Ngahuia Te Awekotuku
#119356
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Ngahuia Te Awekotuku is a New Zealand academic specialising in Māori cultural issues and a lesbian activist. In 1972, she was famously denied a visa to visit the United States on the basis of her sexuality.
Go to Profile#1018
Maria Ludwika Bernhard
#26329
Overall Influence
1908 - 1998 (90 years)
Maria Ludwika Bernhard was a Polish classical archaeologist and a specialist in Greek Art. During the German Occupation of Poland in World War II, Bernhard was living in Warsaw and was active in the Polish Resistance Movement. After the war, Bernhard was a Professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of Warsaw. In 1957 she became the chair of the Department of Classical Archaeology at Jagiellonian University. She was also curator of the Ancient Art gallery at the National Museum in Warsaw from 1945 to 1962.
Go to Profile#1019
Edda Bresciani
#50898
Overall Influence
1930 - 2020 (90 years)
Edda Bresciani was an Italian Egyptologist. Life Bresciani was born in Lucca, and graduated in 1955 from the University of Pisa. She excavated at several places in Egypt and is mainly known for her work at several sites in the Faiyum, most notably the temple of Medinet Maadi. She also found and excavated a Middle Kingdom cemetery at Khelua.
Go to Profile#1020
Margaret C. Miller
#182053
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Margaret Christina Miller is an archaeologist and the Arthur and Renee George Professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of Sydney. Career Miller holds a BA from the University of British Columbia, a MA from Oxford University and an AM from Harvard University. Her 1985 PhD, also from Harvard, was titled "Perserie : the arts of the East in fifth-century Athens". She then continued her studies in the Classics at the American School of Classical Studies at Athens.
Go to Profile#1021
Vivian Wade-Gery
1897 - 1988 (91 years)
Vivian Wade-Gery was a British classical archaeologist. Career Whitfield studied Classics at Trinity College Dublin and Somerville College, Oxford, where she obtained a BA degree in 1924. She was subsequently appointed lecturer in Classics at the University of Reading, and in 1924 to 1925 she received a Gilchrist studentship to study at the British School at Athens to study Greek topgraphy. She spent the period 1927 to 1928 again at the British school at Athens, on leave from Reading and supported by the Bryce studentship, Lady Margaret Hall and the Ireland Trustees, this time studying Spart...
Go to Profile#1022
Lila Morris O'Neale
1886 - 1948 (62 years)
Lila Morris O'Neale was an American anthropologist and historian of textiles. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1931 for her research on prehistoric textiles in Peru. Early life and education Lila Morris O'Neale was born in Buxton, North Dakota, the daughter of George Lester O'Neale and Carrie Higgins O'Neale. She moved with her family to San Jose, California as a girl. She trained as a teacher, like her mother before her; she attended the state teachers college in San Jose, and earned an A. B. at Stanford University ; she completed a bachelor's degree from Columbia University in 1916.
Go to Profile#1023
Viola Garfield
1899 - 1983 (84 years)
Viola E. Garfield was an American anthropologist best known for her work on the social organization and plastic arts of the Tsimshian nation in British Columbia and Alaska. Early life Viola Edmundson was born in Des Moines, Iowa. Her family moved a few years later to Coupeville, Washington, on Whidbey Island, where she attended local schools.
Go to Profile#1024
Cynthia Irwin-Williams
1936 - 1990 (54 years)
Cynthia Irwin-Williams was an archaeologist of the prehistoric American Southwest. She received a B.A. in Anthropology from Radcliffe College in 1957; the next year she received a M.A. in the same field. In 1963 she completed her educational career in Anthropology with a PhD. from Harvard University. Beginning her career in the 1950s, Irwin-Williams was considered a groundbreaker for women in archaeology, like her friend and supporter Hannah Marie Wormington.
Go to Profile#1025
May Mandelbaum Edel
1909 - 1964 (55 years)
May Mandelbaum Edel was an American anthropologist known for her fieldwork among the Okanagan in Washington, the Tillamook in Oregon, and the Kiga in Uganda. Edel's linguistic research of the Tillamook serves as the only published account of the language which provided data for future linguistic publications. Edel was the first American woman anthropologist to live in an African village, and her research in Africa documented the diversity of African cultures.
Go to Profile#1026
Veronica Strang
Veronica Strang is an author and professor of anthropology affiliated to Oxford University. Her work combines cultural anthropology with environmental studies, and focuses on the relationship between human communities and their environments. Strang's publications include the books 'The Meaning of Water' ; Gardening the World: agency, identity, and the ownership of water' ; 'What Anthropologists Do' , 'Water Nature and Culture' and most recently 'Water Beings: from nature worship to the environmental crisis' , which is based on a major comparative study of water deities around the world. Furth...
Go to Profile#1027
Jocelyn Toynbee
1897 - 1985 (88 years)
Jocelyn Mary Catherine Toynbee, was an English archaeologist and art historian. "In the mid-twentieth century she was the leading British scholar in Roman artistic studies and one of the recognized authorities in this field in the world." Having taught at St Hugh's College, Oxford, the University of Reading, and Newnham College, Cambridge, she became Laurence Professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of Cambridge from 1951 to 1962, the first and so far only female to hold this position.
Go to Profile#1028
Dorothea Leighton
1908 - 1989 (81 years)
Dorothea Cross Leighton was an American social psychiatrist and a founder of the field of medical anthropology. Leighton held faculty positions at Cornell University and the University of North Carolina and she was the founding president of the Society for Medical Anthropology. She and her husband, Alexander Leighton, wrote The Navajo Door, which has been described as the first written work in applied medical anthropology.
Go to Profile#1029
Hortense Powdermaker
1900 - 1970 (70 years)
Hortense Powdermaker was an American anthropologist best known for her ethnographic studies of African Americans in rural America and of Hollywood. Early life and education Born to a Jewish family, Powdermaker spent her childhood in Reading, Pennsylvania, and in Baltimore, Maryland. She studied history and the humanities at Goucher College, graduating in 1921. She worked as a labor organizer for the Amalgamated Clothing Workers but became dissatisfied with the prospects of the U.S. labor movement amid the repression of the Palmer Raids. She left the United States to study at the London Schoo...
Go to Profile#1030
Ursula McConnel
1888 - 1957 (69 years)
Ursula Hope McConnel was a Queensland anthropologist and ethnographer best remembered for her work with, and the records she made of, the Wik Mungkan people of Cape York Peninsula. First trained at University College London, then supervised by Professor Alfred Radcliffe-Brown in the Department of Anthropology, University of Sydney, McConnel was one of the first women to be trained in anthropology and then go out to observe Aboriginal Australians in remote areas, systematically documenting, recording, and describing their culture, mythology, beliefs, and way of life.
Go to Profile#1031
Michelle Rosaldo
1944 - 1981 (37 years)
Michelle "Shelly" Zimbalist Rosaldo was a social, linguistic, and psychological anthropologist famous for her studies of the Ilongot people in the Philippines and for her pioneering role in women's studies and the anthropology of gender.
Go to Profile#1032
Sophie Bledsoe Aberle
1896 - 1996 (100 years)
Sophie Bledsoe Aberle was an American anthropologist, physician and nutritionist known for her work with Pueblo people. She was one of two women first appointed to the National Science Board. Early life and education Sophie Bledsoe Herrick was born in 1896 to Albert and Clara S. Herrick in Schenectady, New York. Her paternal grandmother and namesake was the writer Sophia Bledsoe Herrick. Sophie was educated at home and had a brief marriage at age 21 to a man surnamed Aberle, which surname she chose to keep. She began attending University of California in Berkeley but switched to Stanford University, earning a bachelor's degree in 1923, a master's degree in 1925, and a Ph.D.
Go to Profile#1033
Ruth Bunzel
1898 - 1990 (92 years)
Ruth Leah Bunzel was an American anthropologist, known for studying creativity and art among the Zuni people , researching the Mayas in Guatemala, and conducting a comparative study of alcoholism in Guatemala and Mexico. Bunzel was the first American anthropologist to conduct substantial research in Guatemala. Her doctoral dissertation, The Pueblo Potter was a study of the creative process of art in anthropology and Bunzel was one of the first anthropologists to study the creative process.
Go to Profile#1034
Irene Emery
1900 - 1981 (81 years)
Irene Emery was an American art historian, scholar, curator, textile anthropologist, sculptor, and modern dancer. She was known for her pioneering research in systematically describing global textiles, and was a leading authority on ancient fabrics and textiles, and for her published book The Primary Structures of Fabrics: An Illustrated Classification .
Go to Profile#1035
Edith Hall Dohan
1877 - 1943 (66 years)
Edith Hayward Hall Dohan was an American archaeologist who earned Bryn Mawr College's first classical archaeology Ph.D. Hall was part of an excavation team with Harriet Boyd in her early career that most notably brought the first Mycenaean and pre-Mycenaean collection to be displayed in America. Hall later wrote The Decorative Art of Crete in the Bronze Age, which was published in 1906 that breaks down the evolution of the art and pottery in Crete from the Bronze Age.
Go to Profile#1036
Diane Barwick
1938 - 1986 (48 years)
Diane Elizabeth McEachern Barwick was a Canadian-born anthropologist, historian, and Aboriginal-rights activist. She was also a renowned researcher and teacher in the field of Australian Aboriginal culture and society.
Go to Profile#1037
Eva Verbitsky Hunt
1934 - 1980 (46 years)
Muriel Eva Verbitsky de Hunt was an Argentine cultural anthropologist, academic and writer who moved to the United States in the late 1950s. She is remembered for her contributions to symbolic anthropology and ethnohistory. Together with her husband Robert Hunt, she performed innovative regional work in Oaxaca, Mexico, in the 1960s.
Go to Profile#1038
Ella Kivikoski
1901 - 1990 (89 years)
Ella Margareta Kivikoski was the first Finnish female to earn a doctorate in archaeology in Finland. In 1931, she studied at the Baltic Institute in Stockholm and developed a scholarly working relationship with the Estonian archaeologist Harri Moora. She was a Professor of Archaeology at the University of Helsinki from 1948 until 1969, specializing in both Finnish and Nordic archaeology. Her specialty was the Finnish Iron Age.
Go to Profile#1039
Clairève Grandjouan
1929 - 1982 (53 years)
Clairève or Claireve Grandjouan was a French-born American archaeologist. She had a B.A. and Ph.D. from Bryn Mawr College. After working on excavations in Athens, she became General Secretary of the Archaeological Institute of America and editor of its Bulletin, while teaching at New York University . She then taught at Hunter College from 1968, becoming chairman of classical and Oriental studies in 1968 and full professor in 1981.
Go to Profile#1040
Dorothy Lamb
1887 - 1967 (80 years)
Lady Brooke Nicholson, , better known by her maiden name Dorothy Lamb, was a British archaeologist and writer known for her catalogue of terracotta in the Acropolis Museum, Athens and her work in Mediterranean field archaeology.
Go to Profile#1041
Isabelle Raubitschek
1914 - 1988 (74 years)
Isabelle Kelly Raubitschek was an American art historian, archaeologist, and professor of art at Stanford University. Biography Raubitschek was born in Boston, and was the oldest of three children. She began to study foreign languages as a child, eventually becoming fluent in Ancient Greek, Modern Greek, Latin, Italian, French and German. She met and studied with the art historian, Margarete Bieber, when she attended Barnard College in 1935. While at Barnard, she received the Lucille Pulitzer scholarship, which provided finances for four full years of study. She continued her graduate education at Columbia University and in 1936 went to the Institute of Art and Archaeology at Sorbonne.
Go to Profile#1042
Wilhelmina van Ingen Elarth
1905 - 1969 (64 years)
Wilhelmina van Ingen Elarth was an archaeologist and art history and classical studies professor. She studied at Vassar and received her doctorate at Radcliffe. In addition to her research contributions to the classics, she also bridged her interest to contemporary art and architecture. Her grandfather was Henry van Ingen.
Go to Profile#1043
Mary Belle McElwain
1874 - 1964 (90 years)
Mary Belle McElwain was an American classical scholar. Biography McElwain gained her BA from Wilson College in 1895. She subsequently taught Greek, English, and maths at the college until 1903. After teaching at a finishing school at Bryn Mawr until 1908 McElwain gained a MA from Cornell University in 1909 with a thesis titled "The Life of the Empress Livia Based on Latin and Greek Sources" and her PhD in 1910 on "The use of the imperative in Plautus". In 1936 she was awarded an honorary Litt. D. from Wilson College.
Go to Profile#1044
Zora Neale Hurston
1891 - 1960 (69 years)
Zora Neale Hurston was an American author, anthropologist, and filmmaker. She portrayed racial struggles in the early-1900s American South and published research on hoodoo. The most popular of her four novels is Their Eyes Were Watching God, published in 1937. She also wrote over 50 short stories, plays, and essays.
Go to Profile#1045
Lucy Mair
1901 - 1986 (85 years)
Lucy Philip Mair was a British anthropologist. She wrote on the subject of social organization, and contributed to the involvement of anthropological research in governance and politics. Her work on colonial administration was influential.
Go to Profile#1046
Elsie Clews Parsons
1875 - 1941 (66 years)
Elsie Worthington Clews Parsons was an American anthropologist, sociologist, folklorist, and feminist who studied Native American tribes—such as the Tewa and Hopi—in Arizona, New Mexico, and Mexico. She helped found The New School. She was associate editor for The Journal of American Folklore , president of the American Folklore Society , president of the American Ethnological Society , and was elected the first female president of the American Anthropological Association right before her death.
Go to Profile#1047
Gertrude Bell
1868 - 1926 (58 years)
Gertrude Margaret Lowthian Bell, CBE was an English writer, traveller, political officer, administrator, and archaeologist. She spent much of her life exploring and mapping the Middle East, and became highly influential to British imperial policy-making as an Arabist due to her knowledge and contacts built up through extensive travels. During her lifetime, she was highly esteemed and trusted by British officials such as High Commissioner for Mesopotamia Percy Cox, giving her great influence. She participated in both the 1919 Paris Peace Conference and the 1921 Cairo Conference, which help...
Go to Profile#1048
Isabel Kelly
1906 - 1982 (76 years)
Isabel Truesdell Kelly was an American anthropologist known for her work with the members of the Coast Miwok tribe, members of the Chemehuevi people in the 1920s and 1930s, and her work later in life as an archaeologist working in Sinaloa, Mexico. She was trained by anthropologist Alfred L. Kroeber at the University of California, Berkeley.
Go to Profile#1049
Gitel Steed
1914 - 1977 (63 years)
Gitel Poznanski Steed was an American cultural anthropologist known for her research in India 1950–52 involving ethnological work in three villages to study the complex detail of their social structure. She supplemented her research with thousands of ethnological photographs of the individuals and groups studied, the quality of which was recognised by Edward Steichen. She experienced chronic illnesses after her return from the field, but nevertheless completed publications and many lectures but did not survive to finish a book The Human Career in Village India which was to integrate and uni...
Go to Profile#1050
Bertha Parker Pallan
1907 - 1978 (71 years)
Bertha Pallan Thurston Cody was an American archaeologist, working as an assistant in archaeology at the Southwest Museum. She was also married to actor Iron Eyes Cody. She is thought to be the first Native American female archaeologist, of Abenaki and Seneca descent.
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