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).
Methodology: How and Why We Rank by Influence …
See additional learning tools, study tips, features on campus life and much more at our Student Resources Headquarters.
List of the most influential people in Criminal Justice,
#251
Annabelle McIver
#143666
Overall Influence
1964 - Present (60 years)
Annabelle K. McIver is a computer scientist whose research involves the use of formal methods and information flow in computer security and the verification of probabilistic systems. Educated in mathematics in the UK, she works in Australia as professor in the School of Computing at Macquarie University, and as one of the founding leaders of Macquarie's Future Communications Research Centre.
Go to Profile#252
John Goldkamp
#171290
Overall Influence
1947 - 2012 (65 years)
John S. Goldkamp was an American criminologist who was a professor at Temple University for over 25 years. From 1979 to 1983, and again from 2004 to 2010, he was the chair of the department of criminal justice at Temple.
Go to Profile#253
Ramiro Martinez Jr.
#172883
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Ramiro Martinez Jr. is an American criminologist. He is a professor at Northeastern University, in both the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice and the Department of Sociology and Anthropology.
Go to Profile#254
Walter DeKeseredy
#177132
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Walter Steven DeKeseredy is the Anna Deane Carlson Endowed Chair of Social Sciences at West Virginia University, where he is also director of the Research Center on Violence and professor of sociology.
Go to Profile#255
Karen F. Parker
#114718
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Karen Faye Parker is an American sociologist and criminologist known for her research on urban violence. She is a professor of sociology and criminology at the University of Delaware, where she has worked since 2007. She has also been a research associate at the University of Michigan's National Poverty Center since 2007, and was formerly a professor at the University of Florida before joining the faculty of the University of Delaware.
Go to Profile#256
Tomislav Kovandzic
#181121
Overall Influence
Tomislav Victor Kovandzic is an American criminologist and professor at the University of Texas at Dallas. Career Before joining the faculty of the University of Texas at Dallas in 2007, he was an assistant professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham from 1998 to 2005, and an associate professor there from 2005 to 2007. His research focuses on gun control and research methods in criminology. He has also studied the effects of three-strikes laws, right-to-carry gun laws, and increased police presence on crime rates.
Go to Profile#257
Kitty Calavita
#171075
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
Kitty C. Calavita is an American criminologist, focusing in sociology of law, criminology, immigration, criminal justice and inequality, currently the Chancellor's Professor Emerita at University of California, Irvine and an Elected Fellow of the American Political and Social Science Society.
Go to Profile#258
Carmela Troncoso
#110724
Overall Influence
1982 - Present (42 years)
Carmela González Troncoso is a Spanish telecommunication engineer and researcher specialized in privacy issues, and an LGBT+ activist. She is currently a tenure track assistant professor at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland and the head of the SPRING lab . Troncoso gained recognition for her leadership of the European team developing the DP-3T protocol that aims at the creation of an application to facilitate the tracing of COVID-19 infected persons without compromising on the privacy of citizens. Currently she is also member of the Swiss National COVID-19 Science Task Force in the expert group on Digital Epidemiology.
Go to Profile#259
John Worrall
#178068
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (52 years)
John Lampert Worrall is a professor of criminology at the University of Texas at Dallas's School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences. He is known for his research on crime control, policing, and criminal courtss. He is the editor-in-chief of Police Quarterly.
Go to Profile#260
Nicole Westmarland
#169510
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (47 years)
#261
Robert Watson
#29014
Overall Influence
1977 - Present (47 years)
Robert Nicholas Maxwell Watson is a FreeBSD developer, and founder of the TrustedBSD Project. He is currently employed as a Professor of Systems, Security, and Architecture in the Security Research Group at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory.
Go to Profile#262
Eugene Schultz
#53982
Overall Influence
1946 - 2011 (65 years)
Eugene Schultz was an American computer security researcher and expert on cybersecurity. Life Schultz was born on September 10, 1946, in Chicago to E. Eugene Sr. and Elizabeth Schultz. He was married to Cathy Brown for 36 years. The couple had three daughters.
Go to Profile#263
Donna M. Hughes
#142813
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
Donna M. Hughes is an American academic and feminist who chairs the women's studies department at the University of Rhode Island. Her research concerns prostitution and human trafficking; she was a prominent supporter of the campaign to end prostitution in Rhode Island, and has testified on these issues before several national legislative bodies. She sits on the editorial board of Sexualization, Media, and Society, a journal examining the impact of sexualized media.
Go to Profile#264
Deborah Denno
#121754
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (72 years)
Deborah West Denno is an American legal scholar and criminologist who studies the intersection of biology, neuroscience, and criminal law. She is the Arthur A. McGivney Professor of Law at the Fordham University School of Law, where she is also the founding director of the Neuroscience and Law Center. In 2007, she was named one of the fifty most influential women lawyers in the United States by the National Law Journal. She is known for her writings on the constitutionality of certain methods of capital punishment, such as lethal injection. A 2006 article in the Washington Post described her ...
Go to Profile#265
Alan Sherman
#9380
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
Alan Theodore Sherman is a full professor of computer science at UMBC, director of the UMBC Center for Information Security and Assurance , and director of the UMBC Chess Program. Sherman is an editor for Cryptologia, and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi.
Go to Profile#266
SallyAnn Harbison
#180440
Overall Influence
SallyAnn Harbison is a New Zealand forensic scientist. She leads the forensic biology team at the Institute of Environmental Science and Research, and is an associate professor at the University of Auckland. Harbison was appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2021 and in the same year was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi.
Go to Profile#267
Eric Baumer
#185679
Overall Influence
Eric Paul Baumer is an American criminologist and Professor of Sociology and Criminology at Penn State University, where he is also head of the Department of Sociology and Criminology. With Wayne Osgood and Rosemary Gartner, he is the co-editor of the Journal of Criminology, the official Journal of the American Society of Criminology . He was the vice president of the ASC from 2014 to 2015, and became an ASC fellow in 2016.
Go to Profile#268
Herschel Prins
#173755
Overall Influence
1928 - 2016 (88 years)
Herschel Albert Prins was a British professor of criminology. His career spanned over 60 years in work pertaining to forensic psychiatry, and his appointments included positions at the universities of Leeds, Loughborough, Leicester and Birmingham. His roles included HM probation inspectorate, parole board engagement, and involvement in mental health review tribunals and the mental health act commission. He worked with people with malicious activity, antisocial and disinhibited behaviour, unusual sexual deviations and people who behaved dangerously.
Go to Profile#269
Robert C. Seacord
#32082
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Robert C. Seacord is an American computer security specialist and writer. He is the author of books on computer security, legacy system modernization, and component-based software engineering. Education Seacord earned a Bachelor's degree in computer science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in December 1983. He has also completed graduate-level courses at Carnegie-Mellon University in software design, creation and maintenance; user interfaces; software project management; formal methods; human factors; operating systems; and entrepreneurship.
Go to Profile#270
Alba Zaluar
#36935
Overall Influence
1942 - 2019 (77 years)
Alba Maria Zaluar was a Brazilian anthropologist, with emphases in urban anthropology and in anthropology of violence. In 1984, she obtained her PhD in social Anthropology at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
Go to Profile#271
Norman White
#187076
Overall Influence
1953 - 2017 (64 years)
Norman Anthony White was an American criminologist who taught at Saint Louis University . Early life and education White was born on February 20, 1953, in New York City, where he grew up in public housing in upper Manhattan. He attended Marist College in Poughkeepsie, where he received a bachelor's degree and a Master of Public Administration. He went on to receive another master's degree, followed by a doctorate, from the State University of New York at Albany.
Go to Profile#272
Mike Fitzgerald
#178067
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Mike Fitzgerald is a criminologist, former higher education manager and consultant. He was Vice-Chancellor of Thames Valley University in the 1990s. Background Fitzgerald grew up on Merseyside. He attended Catholic grammar school in Crosby, Merseyside and gained entry to the University of Cambridge to read Social Sciences, graduating in the early 1970s. In 1977 he was awarded a PhD by the University of Leicester for Prisoners in Revolt a study which looked at the attempt by the organisation Preservation of the Rights of Prisoners to organise prisoners into a union.
Go to Profile#273
Penny Green
#190309
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (67 years)
#274
Paul Wilson
#189320
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
Paul Richard Wilson is a New Zealand-born Australian social scientist. He was convicted and jailed in 2016 for historical sex offences. Biography Wilson was born in New Zealand. He holds both B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Canterbury, and an earned Ph.D. from the University of Queensland.
Go to Profile#275
Daniel Georges-Abeyie
#60890
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (76 years)
Daniel Earl Georges-Abeyie is an American criminologist and professor in the Barbara Jordan - Mickey Leland School Of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University in Houston, Texas. Early life and education Born in New York City, Georges-Abeyie is of West Indian and African American ancestry. His father was from the island of Tortola in the British West Indies, and his mother was a U.S. citizen from the Atlantic coast in the South. Both of his parents were escaped slaves, and his last name refers to both the plantation that his father's ancestor escaped from and the Fante word meaning "return when the time is right" .
Go to Profile#276
Emma Katz
#184468
Overall Influence
Emma Katz is a UK-based domestic violence researcher. Katz has contributed to policy and popular cultural discussion on coercive control, in particular in the UK, the United States, and Australia. Policy Katz was a member of the expert advisory panel for Research England's Domestic Abuse Policy Guidance for UK Universities 2021.
Go to Profile#277
J. C. Barnes
#191254
Overall Influence
#278
Noemi Procopio
#191536
Overall Influence
Noemi Procopio is a forensic scientist and Research Senior Fellow based in University of Central Lancashire, UK, originally from Sommariva del Bosco in Italy. Procopio is notable for her work in taphonomy and decomposition, in particular applying proteomics to the study of bone proteins in estimating age and time of death, including for submerged corpses. In 2019, Procopio was awarded a Future Leaders Fellowship by UK Research and Innovation, for her project Forens-OMICS: a cross disciplinary implementation of omics sciences to in vivo and post-mortem ageing investigations for forensic applica...
Go to Profile#279
Harry Levine
#190535
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
Harry Gene Levine is an American sociologist known for his research on alcohol and illicit drugs in American society. He is a professor of sociology at Queens College and the Graduate Center, CUNY. His work has included studies on marijuana arrests in New York City, which have found that such arrests are more common there than in any other city in the world, and that they were much more common from 1998 to 2007 than from 1988 to 1997. He has also found that over the 15 years leading up to 2011, far more of those arrested in New York City for marijuana possession were black than were Latino or white .
Go to Profile#280
Jason Moran
#63624
Overall Influence
1967 - 2003 (36 years)
Jason Matthew Patrick Moran was an Australian criminal from Melbourne, and one of the leaders of the Moran family, notable for their involvement in the Melbourne gangland killings. He sported a 12 cm scar on the side of his face.
Go to Profile#281
Maziar Ashrafian Bonab
#71418
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (58 years)
Dr Maziar Ashrafian Bonab is an Iranian forensic pathologist and a medical geneticist specialising in forensic and cancer genetics and Forensic Facial Reconstruction. Part of his groundbreaking research uses human DNA markers to identify the ancestral history of humans/human populations in both anthropological and forensic cases. His main area of research is Cancer Genetics. Maziar was born in Tehran, Iran . Before completing his PhD in Cambridge, he first qualified as a Medical Doctor from Tehran University of Medical Sciences and worked as a Medical Practitioner in Iran. After comple...
Go to Profile#282
Ruth Peterson
1900 - Present (124 years)
Ruth Delois Peterson is an American sociologist and criminologist known for her work on racial and ethnic inequality and crime. She earned her PhD in sociology from University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1983. Peterson is emerita professor of sociology at the Ohio State University, former director of the Criminal Justice Research Center , and former president of the American Society of Criminology . She is the namesake of the American Society of Criminology's Ruth D. Peterson Fellowship for Racial and Ethnic Diversity.
Go to Profile#283
Thorsten Sellin
1896 - 1994 (98 years)
Johan Thorsten Sellin was a Swedish American sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania, a penologist and one of the pioneers of scientific criminology. Biography Sellin was born in Örnsköldsvik in Västernorrland County, Sweden and came to Canada with his parents when he was 17 years old. He received his bachelor's degree from Augustana College in Illinois when he was 19. He went on to receive a master's degree and doctoral degree in sociology from the University of Pennsylvania. He taught at the University of Pennsylvania from 1922 until becoming Professor Emeritus in 1967.
Go to Profile#284
Edwin Sutherland
1883 - 1950 (67 years)
Edwin Hardin Sutherland was an American sociologist. He is considered one of the most influential criminologists of the 20th century. He was a sociologist of the symbolic interactionist school of thought and is best known for defining white-collar crime and differential association, a general theory of crime and delinquency. Sutherland earned his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago in 1913.
Go to Profile#285
Walter Reckless
1898 - 1988 (90 years)
Walter Reckless was an American criminologist known for his containment theory . Biography Reckless earned his PhD in sociology from the University of Chicago. While at the Chicago school, he joined with sociologists Robert Park and Ernest Burgess in conducting observation studies of crime in Chicago, Illinois. This research led to his dissertation, The Natural History of Vice Areas in Chicago , which was published as "Vice in Chicago" - a landmark sociological study of fraud, prostitution, and organized crime in the city's "vice" districts.
Go to Profile#286
Cesare Lombroso
1835 - 1909 (74 years)
Cesare Lombroso was an Italian eugenicist, criminologist, phrenologist, physician, and founder of the Italian school of criminology. He is considered the founder of modern criminal anthropology by changing the Western notions of individual responsibility.
Go to Profile#287
Edmond Locard
1877 - 1966 (89 years)
Dr. Edmond Locard was a French criminologist, the pioneer in forensic science who became known as the "Sherlock Holmes of France". He formulated the basic principle of forensic science: "Every contact leaves a trace". This became known as Locard's exchange principle.
Go to Profile#288
Alexandre Lacassagne
1843 - 1924 (81 years)
Alexandre Lacassagne was a French physician and criminologist who was a native of Cahors. He was the founder of the Lacassagne school of criminology, based in Lyon and influential from 1885 to 1914, and the main rival to Lombroso's Italian school.
Go to Profile#289
Archibald Reiss
1875 - 1929 (54 years)
Rodolphe Archibald Reiss was a German–Swiss criminology-pioneer, forensic scientist, professor and writer. Early life and studies The Reiss family was in agriculture and winemaking. Archibald was the eighth of ten children, son of Ferdinand Reiss, landowner and Pauline Sabine Anna Gabriele Seutter von Loetzen. After finishing highschool in Germany, he went to Switzerland for his studies. He had received a Ph.D. in chemistry at the age of 22 and was an expert in photography and forensic science. In 1906 he was appointed a professor of forensic science at the University of Lausanne. In 1909, he...
Go to Profile#290
Wild Bill Hickok
1837 - 1876 (39 years)
James Butler Hickok , better known as "Wild Bill" Hickok, was a folk hero of the American Old West known for his life on the frontier as a soldier, scout, lawman, cattle rustler, gunslinger, gambler, showman, and actor, and for his involvement in many famous gunfights. He earned a great deal of notoriety in his own time, much of it bolstered by the many outlandish and often fabricated tales he told about himself. Some contemporaneous reports of his exploits are known to be fictitious, but they remain the basis of much of his fame and reputation.
Go to Profile#291
Alfredo Niceforo
1876 - 1960 (84 years)
Alfredo Niceforo was an Italian statistician and scientific racist. Biography Niceforo was born in Castiglione di Sicilia, Catania, Italy, and died March 2, 1960, in Rome. He was an Italian sociologist, criminologist, and statistician who posited the theory that every person has a “deep ego” of antisocial, subconscious impulses that represent a throwback to precivilized existence. Accompanying this ego, and attempting to keep its latent delinquency in check, according to his concept, is a “superior ego” formed by man's social interaction. This theory, which he published in 1902, bears some re...
Go to Profile#292
Heleno Fragoso
1926 - 1985 (59 years)
Heleno Cláudio Fragoso was a Brazilian professor of Criminal Law and Criminology. Biography Heleno Cláudio Fragoso was born in Nova Iguaçú. He lectured at the University of the State of Rio de Janeiro. He served as the Vice President of the International Association of Penal Law and of the International Commission of Jurists. In 1966, he was a visiting instructor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice .
Go to Profile#293
Mikhail Nikolaevich Gernet
1874 - 1953 (79 years)
Mikhail Nikolaevich Gernet was a Russian and Soviet criminologist and legal historian who is considered the founder of sociological criminology in Russia. Gernet taught law at Moscow State University from 1897 on, where he notably opposed the death penalty and introduced the concept of resocialization into Russian criminal law scholarship. In 1911, he took up a post at the Psychoneurological Institute in Moscow. After the Russian Revolution and until his death, he taught at Moscow University again, where he contributed to the Stalinist legal codifications of the 1930s and developed a class-sp...
Go to Profile#294
Wilfrid Derome
1877 - 1931 (54 years)
Wilfrid Derome was a Quebec forensic scientist known as the founder of the first forensic science laboratory in North America, founded in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The laboratory is now called the Laboratoire des Sciences Judiciaires et de Médecine Légale.
Go to Profile#295
Mina Minovici
1857 - 1933 (76 years)
Mina Minovici was a Romanian forensic scientist, known for his extensive research regarding cadaverous alkaloids, putrefaction, simulated mind diseases, and criminal anthropology. Studies He was born in Brăila into a family of Aromanian origin, older brother of Ștefan Minovici and Nicolae Minovici.
Go to Profile#296
Michael Hindelang
1945 - 1982 (37 years)
Michael J. Hindelang was an American criminologist. Early life and education Hindelang was born in Detroit. He received his B.A. in psychology in 1966 and his master's degree in 1967, both from Wayne State University. He received his doctorate in criminology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1969.
Go to Profile#297
Panchanan Ghoshal
1908 - 1990 (82 years)
Panchanan Ghoshal was a Bengali writer, criminologist and social worker. Career Ghoshal was born in a Zaminder family of Naihati, Presently in North 24 Parganas in British India. He passed M.Sc. in Zoology and Ph.D. in Psychology. Criminology was his special paper. While Ghoshal served in Jorasanko police station, Rabindranath Tagore inspired him to write on the subject of crime and criminals. He retired as Deputy Inspector General from Indian Imperial Police service. He was first Indian to be awarded a doctorate degree in Criminal psychology.
Go to Profile#298
Calvin Hooker Goddard
1891 - 1955 (64 years)
Calvin Hooker Goddard was a forensic scientist, army officer, academic, researcher and a pioneer in forensic ballistics. He examined the bullet casings in the 1929 St. Valentine's Day Massacre and showed that the guns used were not police issued weapons, leading the investigators to conclude it was a mob hit.
Go to Profile#299
Mike Mitka
#300
Willem Bonger
1876 - 1940 (64 years)
Willem Adriaan Bonger was a Dutch criminologist and sociologist. He is considered an early Marxist criminologist which through his work, criminology stood out as an autonomous science, making its interrelationship with sociology more evident according to a scientific approach.
Go to Profile