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 people in Criminal Justice,
#51
Daniel Nagin
#20513
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
#52
Matthew Barnett Robinson
#33763
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
#53
Gary LaFree
#28427
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Gary LaFree is a Professor and Chair of the Criminology and Criminal Justice department at the University of Maryland, College Park, the Director of the Maryland Crime Research and Innovation Center and the Founding Director of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism . His main areas of expertise are sociology, criminology, race and crime, cross-national comparative research and political violence and terrorism.
Go to Profile#54
Marie-Andrée Bertrand
#41271
Overall Influence
1925 - 2011 (86 years)
Marie-Andrée Bertrand was a French-Canadian criminologist, a feminist and anti-prohibitionist. Biography Bertrand was born in Montreal and started her career as a social worker for female offenders, mainly sex workers. In 1963, she received a master's degree from the Université de Montréal. She went on to study criminology at the School of Criminology, University of California, Berkeley, where she got her Ph.D. in 1967. She held a professorship in criminology at the School of Criminology, Université de Montréal. She continued to work, until her death, doing research, teaching and publishing.
Go to Profile#55
James B. Jacobs
#25040
Overall Influence
1947 - 2020 (73 years)
James Barrett Jacobs was the Warren E. Burger Professor of Constitutional Law and the Courts at New York University School of Law, where he was a faculty member since 1982. He was a specialist in criminal law, criminal procedure, and criminal justice.
Go to Profile#56
Philip J. Cook
#19734
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (78 years)
Philip Jackson Cook is the ITT/Terry Sanford Professor of Public Policy at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University in the United States. He also holds faculty appointments in Duke's departments of sociology, and economics. His research has focused on crime and criminal justice policy; weapons and violent crime; health and safety regulation including alcohol taxation and the societal costs of drinking; the economics of state lotteries; and income distribution.
Go to Profile#57
Roger Matthews
#35309
Overall Influence
1948 - 2020 (72 years)
Roger Matthews , was a British criminologist. He was a Professor of Criminology at the University of Kent, Canterbury, United Kingdom. Prior to joining the University of Kent, he was a professor of criminology at London South Bank University and Middlesex University.
Go to Profile#58
Cyril Wecht
#5611
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (93 years)
Cyril Harrison Wecht is an American forensic pathologist. He has been the president of both the American Academy of Forensic Sciences and the American College of Legal Medicine, and headed the board of trustees of the American Board of Legal Medicine. Wecht served as County Commissioner and Allegheny County Coroner and Medical Examiner, serving the Pittsburgh metropolitan area. He is perhaps best known for his criticism of the Warren Commission's findings concerning the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
Go to Profile#59
Cassia Spohn
#28471
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
#60
Frank Schmalleger
#30875
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
#61
Kim Rossmo
#48495
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Dr. Kim Rossmo is a Canadian criminologist specializing in geographic profiling. Vancouver He joined the Vancouver Police Department as a civilian employee in 1978 and became a sworn officer in 1980. In 1987 he received a master's degree in criminology from Simon Fraser University and in 1995 became the first police officer in Canada to obtain a doctorate in criminology. His dissertation research resulted in a new criminal investigative methodology called geographic profiling, based on Rossmo's formula. This technology was integrated into a specialized crime analysis software product called Rigel.
Go to Profile#62
Alex Piquero
#46311
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (54 years)
#63
Paul Rock
#40148
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Paul Rock is British sociologist and criminologist, and is Professor of Social Institutions at the London School of Economics. He was a founder member of the National Deviancy Conference. Paul Rock has contributed to the field of public criminology. He believes that this field should not be looked away in the eyes of criminologist, however, he does state that public criminology does have flaws. Flaws that may not allow it to "rise" up.
Go to Profile#64
Kevin Beaver
#37295
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (47 years)
#65
John Lea
#46954
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
John Lea is a British left realist criminologist. For many years he was based at the Centre for Criminology and the Crime and Conflict Research Centre, Middlesex University in the United Kingdom. Career He graduated from the London School of Economics and Political Science, University of London with a BSc in Economics in 1967, before gaining MSc's in Economics and Social Policy there too.
Go to Profile#66
David M. Kennedy
#31393
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (66 years)
David M. Kennedy is a criminologist, professor, action researcher, and author specializing in crime prevention among inner city gangs, especially in the prevention of violent acts among street gangs. Kennedy developed the Operation Ceasefire group violence intervention in Boston in the 1990s and the High Point Model drug market intervention in High Point, North Carolina, in 2003, which have proven to reduce violence and eliminate overt drug markets in jurisdictions around the United States. He founded the National Network for Safe Communities in 2009 to support cities using these and related ...
Go to Profile#67
Francis T. Cullen
#62231
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Francis Thomas Cullen, Jr. is an American criminologist and Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus at the University of Cincinnati's School of Criminal Justice. Education and career Born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1951, Cullen enrolled at Bridgewater State College in 1968, hoping to avoid getting drafted into the Vietnam War by getting a grade point average of 2.0 or higher. He graduated in 1972 with a B.A. in psychology. He later received his M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1974 and 1979, respectively. Both his graduate degrees were in sociology and education. He taught at Wes...
Go to Profile#68
Dan Boneh
#10739
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Dan Boneh is an Israeli–American professor in applied cryptography and computer security at Stanford University. In 2016, Boneh was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering for contributions to the theory and practice of cryptography and computer security.
Go to Profile#69
Tsutomu Shimomura
#10603
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Tsutomu Shimomura is a Japanese-born physicist and computer security expert. He is known for helping the FBI track and arrest hacker Kevin Mitnick. Takedown, his 1996 book on the subject with journalist John Markoff, was later adapted for the screen in Track Down in 2000.
Go to Profile#70
John Paul Wright
#42603
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
John Paul Wright is an American criminologist and proponent of biosocial criminology. He is a professor in the School of Criminal Justice at the University of Cincinnati College of Education, Criminal Justice, and Human Services. He is also the director of the graduate program in criminal justice there. Among the students whose Ph.D. theses he has overseen is Kevin Beaver, a professor at Florida State University.
Go to Profile#71
Steven Murdoch
#27057
Overall Influence
Steven James Murdoch is Professor of Security Engineering in the Computer Science Department, University College London. His research covers privacy-enhancing technology, Internet censorship, and anonymous communication, in particular Tor. He is also known for discovering several vulnerabilities in the EMV bank chipcard payment system and for creating Tor Browser.
Go to Profile#72
David S. Wall
#63172
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
David S. Wall FRSA FAcSS is Professor of Criminology at the Centre for Criminal Justice Studies, School of Law, University of Leeds, England, where he researches and teaches cybercrime, policing, organised and transnational crime and intellectual property crime. He rejoined the University of Leeds in August 2015 from Durham University, where he was Professor of Criminology. Between 2011 and 2014 he was Head of the School of Applied Social Sciences . Before moving to Durham in 2010 he was Professor of Criminal Justice and Information Society at the University of Leeds, where he also held the position of Head of the School of Law and Director of the Centre for Criminal Justice Studies .
Go to Profile#73
Katheryn Russell-Brown
#50710
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
Katheryn Russell-Brown is an American social scientist, professor of law and director of the Center for the Study of Race and Race Relations at University of Florida Law School. Her main areas of expertise are race and crime, sociology of law and criminal law.
Go to Profile#74
Jason Healey
#43203
Overall Influence
Jason Healey is a senior research scholar and adjunct professor at the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University. He is also a senior fellow with the Cyber Statecraft Initiative at the Atlantic Council, where he was the program's founding director. He has published many academic articles, essays, and books on the topic of cyber security and has advised on security measures for corporate, government, and military institutions. He has been identified as the first historian of cyber conflict.
Go to Profile#75
Dawn Song
#10608
Overall Influence
1975 - Present (49 years)
Dawn Song is a Chinese American academic and is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department. She received a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 2010.
Go to Profile#76
Bernard Knight
#12564
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (93 years)
Bernard Henry Knight is a British forensic pathologist and writer. He became a Home Office pathologist in 1965 and was appointed Professor of Forensic Pathology, University of Wales College of Medicine, in 1980.
Go to Profile#77
Patricia Mayhew
#56801
Overall Influence
Patricia Mayhew is a British criminologist and civil servant. She was formerly the Deputy Head of the Crime and Criminal Justice Unit at the Home Office in the United Kingdom, as well as the director of the Crime and Justice Research Centre at the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand from 2004 to 2008. Her other positions include working at the National Institute of Justice in Washington, D. C., United States and the Australian Institute of Criminology in Canberra, Australia. She was one of the designers of the original International Crime Victims Survey in 1982, and managed the survey until 2000.
Go to Profile#78
Raymond Paternoster
#61306
Overall Influence
1952 - 2017 (65 years)
Raymond "Ray" Paternoster was an American criminologist who taught at the University of Maryland from 1982 until his death in 2017, spending some of this time as a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice there.
Go to Profile#79
Mark Kleiman
#30919
Overall Influence
1951 - 2019 (68 years)
Mark Albert Robert Kleiman was an American professor, author, and blogger who dealt with issues of drug and criminal justice policy. A professor of public policy for many years at UCLA, Kleiman in 2015 became the director of the Crime and Justice Program at New York University's Marron Institute of Urban Management. Kleiman was an expert in the field of crime and drug policy and authored several books in the field.
Go to Profile#80
Biko Agozino
#51445
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (63 years)
#81
Colleen M. Fitzpatrick
#26027
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (69 years)
Colleen M. Fitzpatrick is an American forensic scientist, genealogist and entrepreneur. She helped identify remains found in the crash site of Northwest Flight 4422, that crashed in Alaska in 1948, and co-founded the DNA Doe Project which identifies previously unidentified bodies and runs Identifinders International, an investigative genetic genealogy consulting firm which helps identify victims and perpetrators of violent crimes.
Go to Profile#82
Kevin Mitnick
#22204
Overall Influence
1963 - 2023 (60 years)
Kevin David Mitnick was an American computer security consultant, author, and convicted hacker. He is best known for his high-profile 1995 arrest and five years in prison for various computer and communications-related crimes. Mitnick's pursuit, arrest, trial, and sentence along with the associated journalism, books, and films were all controversial. After his release from prison, he ran his own security firm, Mitnick Security Consulting, LLC, and was also involved with other computer security businesses.
Go to Profile#83
J. Alex Halderman
#18224
Overall Influence
1981 - Present (43 years)
J. Alex Halderman is professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Michigan, where he is also director of the Center for Computer Security & Society. Halderman's research focuses on computer security and privacy, with an emphasis on problems that broadly impact society and public policy.
Go to Profile#84
Joan McCord
#49815
Overall Influence
1930 - 2004 (74 years)
Joan Fish McCord was an American professor of Criminology at Temple University. Through her experimental studies of delinquency, including the Cambridge Somerville Youth Study, and her philosophical perspective, she made important contributions to the understanding of developmental criminology, the differing roles of mothers, fathers, and neighborhoods, and the importance of differentiating between discipline and punishment. McCord was a recipient of the Herbert Bloch Award from the American Society of Criminology. and the International Society of Criminologys Emile Durkheim prize.
Go to Profile#85
John C. Mitchell
#5547
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (24 years)
John Clifford Mitchell is professor of computer science and electrical engineering at Stanford University. He has published in the area of programming language theory and computer security. John C. Mitchell was the Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning at Stanford University, the Mary and Gordon Crary Family Professor in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, co-director of the Stanford Computer Security Lab, and Professor of Education. He is a member of the steering committee for Stanford University's Cyber Initiative. Mitchell has been Vice Provost at Stanfor...
Go to Profile#86
Adrian Raine
#86028
Overall Influence
#87
Nicole Hahn Rafter
#62585
Overall Influence
1939 - 2016 (77 years)
Nicole Hahn Rafter was a feminist criminology professor at Northeastern University. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, achieved her Master of Arts in Teaching from Harvard University, and obtained a Ph.D. in Criminal Justice from State University of New York in Albany. She began her career as a high school and college English professor and switched to criminal justice in her mid-thirties.
Go to Profile#88
Matt Blaze
#7753
Overall Influence
Matt Blaze is an American researcher who focuses on the areas of secure systems, cryptography, and trust management. He is currently the McDevitt Chair of Computer Science and Law at Georgetown University, and is on the board of directors of the Tor Project.
Go to Profile#89
Shari Forbes
#43977
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (47 years)
Professor Shari L. Forbes is an Australian and Canadian forensic scientist and researcher. She is a thanatology expert on the decomposition of human bodies. She created a body farm in Australia and between 2019 and 2022 established a similar facility in Canada, connected to the Forensic Science department at Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières . As of January 2023, she is a full professor in chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Windsor, and is hoping to start the first body farm in Ontario in the coming years.
Go to Profile#90
Joan Petersilia
#69012
Overall Influence
1951 - 2019 (68 years)
Joan Ramme Petersilia was an American criminologist and the Adelbert H. Sweet Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, as well as the faculty co-director of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center. Education Petersilia received her B.A. from Loyola Marymount University in 1972 in sociology, her M.A. from Ohio State University in 1974, also in sociology, and her Ph.D. from the University of California, Irvine in criminology, law & society in 1990.
Go to Profile#91
Jerome Skolnick
#72039
Overall Influence
1931 - Present (93 years)
Jerome Herbert Skolnick is a professor at New York University and a former president of the American Society of Criminology. He is also affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley. Skolnick has a Ph.D. in sociology from Yale University.
Go to Profile#92
Linda M. Williams
#48761
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Linda Meyer Williams is an American sociologist and criminologist. She is senior research scientist at Wellesley Centers for Women and director of the Justice and Gender-Based Violence Research Initiative. She is also professor emerita of criminal justice and criminology at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, where she teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on child maltreatment, research methods, and gender, race and crime. Williams has researched in the field of psychology on topics including child abuse, family violence and violence against women, and trauma and memory .
Go to Profile#93
Robert A. D'amico
#93596
Overall Influence
#94
William Wilbanks
#73627
Overall Influence
1940 - 2018 (78 years)
William Lee Wilbanks was an American criminologist and former professor of criminal justice at Florida International University. Education Wilbanks graduated from Belton High School in Belton, Texas in 1958. At Belton High, he was an all-state guard on the State AA Championship basketball team that won the Class 2A championship in 1958. He went on to receive his B.A. from Abilene Christian College in 1963, after which he received his M.A.'s from Abilene Christian College, Sam Houston State University, and the University at Albany, SUNY in 1965, 1972, and 1972, respectively. In 1975, he received his Ph.D.
Go to Profile#95
Rebecca Bace
#19676
Overall Influence
1955 - 2017 (62 years)
Rebecca "Becky" Gurley Bace was an American computer security expert and pioneer in intrusion detection. She spent 12 years at the US National Security Agency where she created the Computer Misuse and Anomaly Detection research program. She was known as the "den mother of computer security". She was also influential in the early stages of intelligence community venture capital and was a major player in Silicon Valley investments in cyber security technology.
Go to Profile#96
Jaan Priisalu
#55461
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
Jaan Priisalu is an Estonian cyber security official. 2011–2015, he was the Director General of Estonian Information System Authority . In 2014, he was awarded by Order of the White Star, III class.
Go to Profile#97
Scott Decker
#84945
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
#98
Mary Francesca Bosworth
#94913
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
#99
Anthony Braga
#94793
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (55 years)
Anthony Allan Braga is an American criminologist and the Jerry Lee Professor of Criminology at the University of Pennsylvania. Braga is also the Director of the Crime and Justice Policy Lab at the University of Pennsylvania. He previously held faculty and senior research positions at Harvard University, Northeastern University, Rutgers University, and the University of California at Berkeley. Braga is a member of the federal monitor team overseeing the reforms to New York City Police Department policies, training, supervision, auditing, and handling of complaints and discipline regarding sto...
Go to Profile#100
Rebecca Mercuri
#48760
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Rebecca Mercuri is a computer scientist specializing in computer security and computer forensics. She is considered a leading expert on electronic voting systems. Education Mercuri earned her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 2000 after defending her thesis on electronic voting. She was a fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the John F. Kennedy School of Government. From 2004–2005, she was a computer science fellow at Harvard University's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, focusing on transparency and trust in computational systems.
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