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,
#1
William Bratton
#1175
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
William Joseph Bratton CBE is an American law enforcement officer and businessman who served two terms as the New York City Police Commissioner . He previously served as the Commissioner of the Boston Police Department and Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department . He is the only person to have led the police departments of the United States' two largest cities – New York and Los Angeles.
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Jock Young
#2531
Overall Influence
1942 - 2013 (71 years)
Jock Young was a British sociologist and an influential criminologist. Biography Jock Young was educated at the London School of Economics. His PhD was an ethnography of drug use in Notting Hill, West London, out of which he developed the concept of moral panic. The research was published as The Drugtakers. He was a founding member of the National Deviancy Conferences and a group of critical criminologists in which milieu he wrote the groundbreaking, The New Criminology: For a Social Theory of Deviance in 1973, with Ian Taylor and Paul Walton and The Manufacture of News .
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Travis Hirschi
#1190
Overall Influence
1935 - 2017 (82 years)
Travis Warner Hirschi was an American sociologist and an emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Arizona. He helped to develop the modern version of the social control theory of crime and later the self-control theory of crime.
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George L. Kelling
#2718
Overall Influence
1935 - 2019 (84 years)
George Lee Kelling was an American criminologist, a professor in the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University–Newark, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, and a fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He previously taught at Northeastern University.
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Richard A. Clarke
#568
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (74 years)
Richard Alan Clarke is an American national security expert, novelist, and former government official. He served as the Counterterrorism Czar for the National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-Terrorism for the United States between 1998 and 2003.
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Bruce Schneier
#529
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
#7
Robert D. Keppel
#6410
Overall Influence
1944 - 2021 (77 years)
Robert David Keppel was an American law enforcement officer and detective. He was also an associate professor at the University of New Haven and Sam Houston State University. Keppel was known for his contributions to the investigations of Ted Bundy and Gary Ridgway, and also assisted in the creation of HITS, the Homicide Investigation Tracking System.
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Freda Adler
#8213
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (90 years)
Freda Adler is a criminologist and educator, currently serving as professor emeritus at Rutgers University and a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania. She was President of the American Society of Criminology in 1994-1995. She has acted as a consultant to the United Nations on criminal justice matters since 1975, holding various roles within United Nations organizations. A prolific writer, Adler has published in a variety of criminological areas, including female criminality, international issues in crime, piracy, drug abuse, and social control theories.
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Charles Moose
#7191
Overall Influence
1953 - 2021 (68 years)
Charles Alexander Moose was an American author and police officer. He was best known for his role as being the primary official in charge of the efforts to apprehend the D.C. snipers in October 2002. During his law enforcement career, Moose served as the chief of police for Montgomery County, Maryland, and Portland, Oregon.
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Albert K. Cohen
#5610
Overall Influence
1918 - 2014 (96 years)
Albert Kircidel Cohen was a prominent American criminologist. He is known for his Subcultural Theory of delinquent urban gangs, including his influential book Delinquent Boys: Culture of the Gang. He has served as Vice President of the American Society of Criminology from 1984–1985 and in 1993 he received the society's Edwin H. Sutherland award.
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Lawrence W. Sherman
#7641
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
Lawrence W. Sherman is an American experimental criminologist and police educator who is the founder of evidence-based policing. Sherman's use of randomized controlled experiments to study deterrence and crime prevention has led him to examine such wide-ranging issues as domestic violence, saturation patrol, gun violence, crack houses, and reintegrative shaming. He has collaborated with over 30 police and justice agencies around the world, and been credited as a key founder of the field of experimental criminology.
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David Matza
#7566
Overall Influence
1930 - 2018 (88 years)
David Matza was an American sociologist who taught at University of California, Berkeley from 1961. Life and Work Born in New York, he received his PhD from Princeton University in 1959. His research fields included deviant behavior, social change, poverty and working class life. He is best known for coauthoring, with Gresham Sykes, techniques of neutralization.
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Michael R. Gottfredson
#5660
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Michael Ryan Gottfredson is the former President of the University of Oregon, serving from August 1, 2012 to August 6, 2014. Biography He has a B.A from the University of California, Davis, a M.A. and a Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Albany.
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Louk Hulsman
#8423
Overall Influence
1923 - 2009 (86 years)
Lodewijk Henri Christian Hulsman, known as Louk Hulsman was a Dutch legal scientist and criminologist. Life According to Hulsman, his childhood and adolescence were marked by the time he spent in a religious boarding school that left him traumatized. After graduating from school Hulsman was involved in a resistance movement during World War II. In 1944 he was convicted of using counterfeit identification papers and imprisoned at the Amersfoort concentration camp. While being transferred to Germany he successfully escaped. After returning to the Netherlands he joined the Allied troops as a soldier during the last weeks of the Second World War.
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Gary Kleck
#5576
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
Gary Kleck is a criminologist and the David J. Bordua Professor Emeritus of Criminology at Florida State University. Early life and education Kleck was born in Lombard, Illinois, to William and Joyce Kleck. He attended Glenbard East High School before enrolling in the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he received his BA , MA , and PhD , all in Sociology.
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Alfred Blumstein
#5982
Overall Influence
1930 - Present (94 years)
#17
James Alan Fox
#8170
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
James Alan Fox is the Lipman Family Professor of Criminology, Law, and Public Policy and former dean at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, in the United States. Fox holds a bachelor's degree in sociology , a master's degree in criminology , a master's degree in statistics , and a Ph.D. in sociology , all from the University of Pennsylvania.
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Jerzy Sarnecki
#12438
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (77 years)
#19
Ronald Noble
#4836
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Ronald Kenneth "Ron" Noble is an American law enforcement officer who served as the secretary-general of the International Criminal Police Organization from 2000 to 2014. He was the organization's first American and youngest secretary-general at the time of his appointment. Noble previously worked as a public servant in various U.S. government agencies, including the District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, the Department of Justice and the Treasury.
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David P. Farrington
#19368
Overall Influence
1944 - Present (80 years)
#21
John Braithwaite
#12560
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (73 years)
#22
Nils Christie
#6867
Overall Influence
1928 - 2015 (87 years)
Nils Christie was a Norwegian sociologist and criminologist. He was a professor of criminology at the Faculty of Law, University of Oslo. Personal life Christie was born in Oslo on 24 February 1928, a son of Ragnvald Christie and Ruth Hellum. He married Vigdis Margit Moe in 1951, and was later married to .
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Lonnie Athens
#11870
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (75 years)
#24
William Chambliss
#10775
Overall Influence
1933 - 2014 (81 years)
William Joseph Chambliss was an American criminologist and sociologist. He was a professor of Sociology and Criminal Justice at The George Washington University for over 20 years. He was a pioneer of the conflict theory which concluded, among other things, that conflict between different social classes is the fundamental force in capitalist societies. In addition to his transformative scholarly contributions, he was a teacher-scholar and mentor to many of today’s leading criminologists and sociologists.
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Joseph L. Gormley
#14005
Overall Influence
1914 - 2004 (90 years)
Joseph Leo Gormley was the chief of chemistry and toxicology for the FBI. Born in Clinton, Massachusetts, he was raised in Somerville, Massachusetts. Gormley received his bachelor's and master's degrees in chemistry from Boston College. With his wife Frances he fathered and raised nine children.
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Shaun L. Gabbidon
#12956
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (57 years)
#27
Jürgen Stock
#18172
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Jürgen Stock is a German police officer and academic. He has served as secretary general of Interpol since November 7, 2014. Biography Stock was born on October 4, 1959, in Wetzlar, Germany. He joined the Kriminalpolizei in Hesse in 1978 and stayed on as an officer until 1992. Between 1992 and 1996 he went to the University of Giessen to occupy himself with scientific research in criminology. In 1996 he worked as a lawyer, before returning to the Bundeskriminalamt to become the deputy head of a unit combating economic crime. Stock became President of the University of Applied Police Science l...
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Henry Lee
#11655
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
#29
Tim Newburn
#21979
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
William Henry Timothy Newburn is an academic, specialising in criminology and policing. Career He was president of the British Society of Criminology from 2005–2008, director of the Mannheim Centre for Criminology from 2003-2008 and is currently head of the Department of Social Policy at the London School of Economics and Political Science. From 1997, he was Director of the Public Policy Research Unit at Goldsmiths College and has previously worked at the Policy Studies Institute, the National Institute for Social Work, the Home Office and Leicester University.
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Marvin Wolfgang
#20340
Overall Influence
1924 - 1998 (74 years)
Marvin Eugene Wolfgang was an American sociologist and criminologist. Biography Wolfgang was a soldier in World War II and participated in the Battle of Monte Cassino. After the war he studied at Dickinson College, graduating in 1948, and the University of Pennsylvania, where his principal teacher was Thorsten Sellin. At Penn, Wolfgang took his MA and PhD in sociology/criminology. Until his death in 1998 he was a professor of criminology at the University of Pennsylvania.
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Herman Goldstein
#32364
Overall Influence
1931 - 2020 (89 years)
#32
Butler Lampson
#718
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (81 years)
Butler W. Lampson, ForMemRS, is an American computer scientist best known for his contributions to the development and implementation of distributed personal computing. Education and early life After graduating from the Lawrenceville School , Lampson received an A.B. in physics from Harvard University in 1964 and a PhD in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of California, Berkeley in 1967.
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Robert Schifreen
#19224
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (61 years)
Robert Jonathan Schifreen is a former UK-based computer hacker and magazine editor, and the founder of IT security awareness training programme SecuritySmart.co.uk. He was the first person charged with illegally accessing a computer system, but was acquitted because there was no such specific criminal offence at the time. Later in life he became a computer security consultant, speaking at many conferences on information security and training banks, large companies and universities in the UK on IT security. In 2014 he began developing the software on which SecuritySmart runs from scratch which...
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Ronald V. Clarke
#28329
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
#35
Jacob Appelbaum
#4673
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (41 years)
Jacob Appelbaum is an American independent journalist, computer security researcher, artist, and hacker. Appelbaum studied at the Eindhoven University of Technology and was a core member of the Tor project, a free software network designed to provide online anonymity, until he stepped down from his position over sexual abuse allegations which surfaced in 2016. He was among several people to work with NSA contractor Edward Snowden's top secret documents released in 2013. His journalistic work has been published in Der Spiegel and elsewhere. Appelbaum is also known for representing WikiLeaks. H...
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Alain Bauer
#13816
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (62 years)
Alain Bauer is a French criminologist who has been a professor of criminology at the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers since 2009. He is also a senior research fellow at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and the China University of Political Science and Law . There were many protests in the scientific community in France against the appointment because he had not received a PhD.
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David Downes
#41340
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (86 years)
David Downes is a British sociologist and criminologist and is Professor Emeritus of Social Administration at the London School of Economics. Downes was one of the founder members of the National Deviancy Conference.
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David Weisburd
#35230
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (70 years)
David L. Weisburd , is an Israeli/American criminologist who is well known for his research on crime and place, policing and white collar crime. Weisburd was the 2010 recipient of the prestigious Stockholm Prize in Criminology, and was recently awarded the Israel Prize in Social Work and Criminological Research, considered the state's highest honor. Weisburd holds joint tenured appointments as Distinguished Professor of Criminology, Law and Society at George Mason University. and Walter E. Meyer Professor of Law and Criminal Justice in the Institute of Criminology of the Hebrew University Fa...
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Mike Sutton
#18262
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (65 years)
Michael Robert Sutton is an ex-reader in criminology in the School of Social Sciences at Nottingham Trent University, where he established the now defunct Centre for Study and Reduction of Bias, Prejudice and Hate Crime and is co-founder and chief editor of the Internet Journal of Criminology. He was joint winner of the 1998 British Journal of Criminology Prize for his research on hackers, and publicised the market reduction approach for tackling theft. Sutton has published journal articles on the subject of inter-racial relationships and violence.
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Anthony Walsh
#22178
Overall Influence
1941 - Present (83 years)
#41
Gresham Sykes
#18530
Overall Influence
1922 - 2010 (88 years)
Gresham M'Cready Sykes was an American sociologist and criminologist. He earned a Bachelor of Arts at Princeton University and a Ph.D. at Northwestern University. He taught at Princeton, Dartmouth, and Northwestern prior to becoming sociology professor at the University of Virginia. Sykes's study of New Jersey State Prison has been described as a pioneering look at the issues faced by guards, as well as the pains of imprisonment encountered by inmates . His most famous work is The Society of Captives, which is sometimes considered the first work in the genre of prison sociology. He coauthored...
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Bernd Brinkmann
#18714
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
Bernd Brinkmann is a German forensic pathologist. Biography Bernd Brinkmann was the director of the Institute of Legal Medicine of the University of Münster in Münster, North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany from 1981 until 2007. From 1990 until 2009 he served as the Coordinating Editor of the International Journal of Legal Medicine.
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Anthony Bottoms
#29055
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (85 years)
Sir Anthony Edward Bottoms FBA is a British criminologist. He is life fellow at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, having previously been a Wolfson Professor of Criminology at the Institute of Criminology in the Faculty of Law at the University of Cambridge from 1984 to 2006 and until December 2007 a professor of criminology jointly at the universities of Cambridge and Sheffield.
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Leon Radzinowicz
#23113
Overall Influence
1906 - 1999 (93 years)
Sir Leon Radzinowicz, was a criminologist and academic. He was the founding director of the Institute of Criminology at the Faculty of Law at the University of Cambridge. Early life Radzinowicz was born on 15 August 1906 in Łódź, Congress Poland. He studied law as an undergraduate student at the University of Paris and the University of Geneva. He went on to study for a doctorate at the University of Cracow. During this time, he spent a year studying under Enrico Ferri at the Institute of Criminology in Rome, Italy. Radzinowicz moved to England in 1938, having been granted funding by the Pol...
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Grant Duwe
#30783
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (53 years)
Grant Duwe is an American criminologist and research director at the Minnesota Department of Corrections, as well as a non-visiting scholar at Baylor University's Institute for Studies of Religion. Duwe holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Kansas and a Ph.D. in Criminology and Criminal Justice from Florida State University.
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Mimi Ajzenstadt
#20199
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (68 years)
Mimi Ajzenstadt is an Israeli criminologist who was named the Mildred and Benjamin Berger Chair in Criminology at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and is the President of the Open University of Israel.
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Raúl Zaffaroni
#11257
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (84 years)
Eugenio Raúl Zaffaroni is a former Argentine polititian and judge. He served as a member of the Supreme Court of Argentina from 2003 until 2015, when he resigned due to age restrictions to hold the position. He subsequently served in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights from 2016 to 2022.
Go to Profile#48
Karuppannan Jaishankar
#28403
Overall Influence
1973 - Present (51 years)
#49
Michael Tonry
#27617
Overall Influence
1945 - Present (79 years)
#50
Albert J. Reiss
#15889
Overall Influence
1922 - 2006 (84 years)
Albert John Reiss Jr. was an American sociologist and criminologist. Career He served as the William Graham Sumner Professor of Sociology at Yale University from 1970 until his retirement in 1993. He is recognized for his contributions to social control theory, as well as for his research on police violence. He has been credited with coining the term "proactive" while researching violent incidents between police and private citizens as a research director for Lyndon B. Johnson's President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice. This research led Reiss to conclude that t...
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