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 Economics,
#601
Janelle Knox-Hayes
#179083
Overall Influence
1983 - Present (43 years)
Janelle Knox-Hayes is the Lister Brothers Associate Professor of Economic Geography in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her research and teaching explore the institutional nature of social, economic and environmental systems, and the ways in which these are impacted by changing socio-economic spatial and temporal dynamics.
Go to Profile#602
Katja Windt
#69240
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Katja Windt is a researcher and professor of global production logistics who served as president of Jacobs University Bremen from 2014 until 2018. Education Windt received her doctorate in 2000 from the Institut für Fabrikanlagen und Logistik IFA . During her studies she attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , Cambridge, Massachusetts, for one semester.
Go to Profile#603
Marian Chertow
#92971
Overall Influence
Marian Ruth Chertow is an American academic specializing in environmental management. Biography She holds a B.A. from Barnard College , a M.P.P.M. from Yale University, and a Ph.D. from Yale University with thesis titled Accelerating commercialization of environmental technology in the United States: Theory and case studies.
Go to Profile#604
Anna Paulson
#157936
Overall Influence
Anna Louise Paulson is an American economist who is Executive Vice President and Director of Research of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. She is a member of the American Economic Association’s Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession and a past board member of the Western Economic Association International.
Go to Profile#605
Kalina Manova
#126842
Overall Influence
Kalina Manova is an American and Bulgarian professor of economics and deputy head of department at University College London. She is the winner of the 2016 Philip Leverhulme Prize. She also part of the council of the European Economic Association. She is on the editorial board of the Review of Economic Studies.
Go to Profile#606
Margo Buchanan-Oliver
#176837
Overall Influence
1901 - 2018 (117 years)
Margo Buchanan-Oliver was a full professor in the Faculty of Business and Economics at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. Academic career Buchanan-Oliver completed a PhD at the University of Auckland in 1989 with a thesis titled Media vitae in morte sumus: patterns of life and death in the English mediaeval morality drama: with special reference to the play Mankin. She rose to full professor and head of the Department of Marketing in the Faculty of Business and Economics at the University of Auckland.
Go to Profile#607
Cecilia Garcia-Penalosa
#189884
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Cecilia García-Peñalosa is a Spanish economist and a research fellow at the Aix-Marseille University. She is also a research professor at the Institute for Fiscal Studies and has an affiliation with the Bank of France. She was an associate editor of the European Economic Review and is currently an associate editor at the Journal of Economic Inequality.
Go to Profile#608
Sue Schurman
#140434
Overall Influence
Sue Schurman is an American scholar, currently distinguished professor at Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations and dean from 2011 to 2015. Education Schurman earned her PhD from University of Michigan.
Go to Profile#609
Cheryl Lehman
#103546
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Cheryl Lehman, also professionally known as Cheryl R. Lehman, is a professor at Hofstra University and an accounting academic. History Cheryl Lehman graduated with a bachelor's degree in accounting in 1975 from Queen's College of The City University of New York. She obtained a Master of Philosophy degree from New York University in 1982, from which she also obtained a doctorate in accounting in 1985, from the Graduate School of Business Administration.
Go to Profile#610
Olena Nepochatenko
#189615
Overall Influence
Olena Oleksandrivna Nepochatenko is a Ukrainian agricultural economist and academic administrator. She is the rector of Uman National University of Horticulture since 2013. Nepochatenko specializes the study of lending to agricultural enterprises, taxation of agricultural producers, loans, and agricultural leasing. She holds of the title of and was awarded the , third class.
Go to Profile#611
Janice Hammond
#98571
Overall Influence
Janice H. Hammond is an American economist currently the Jesse Philips Professor of Manufacturing at Harvard Business School. She teaches the Business Analytics course at Harvard Business School online.
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Muriel Anton
#190549
Overall Influence
1962 - Present (64 years)
Muriel Anton is a Czech economist and business executive, who was the CEO of Vodafone Czech Republic to October 2013. Anton studied for a bachelor's degree in Commerce and a Masters of Arts in Economics at the University of Alberta, in Canada. From 1988 to 1991, she lectured there in intermediate and introductory macroeconomics at the Faculty of Economics. After numerous positions in financial planning and analysis management at telecommunications companies, she joined Oskar in January 2000. She was later appointed Director of Vodafone Czech Republic. In October 2013, she was succeeded by Bale...
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Jane D'Arista
#119939
Overall Influence
Jane D'Arista is an American economist and research associate at the Economic Policy Institute and co-coordinator of its Committee of Economists and Analysts for Financial Reform. She has written on the history of U.S. monetary policy and financial regulation, international and domestic monetary systems, and capital flows to emerging economies. She served for 20 years as a staff economist for the U.S. Congress, and then, from 1988 to 1999, she taught international finance at Boston University School of Law. She authored The Evolution of U.S. Finance .
Go to Profile#614
Ingrid Antonijevic
#187125
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Ingrid Antonijevic Hahn is a Chilean economist, entrepreneur, academic and former Minister of Economy, Development and Reconstruction for only two months, in the first cabinet of socialist president Michelle Bachelet. In her youth, she was a militant in the MAPU organisation, and after the end of the Pinochet regime she was one of the founders of the Party for Democracy that has led the transition towards democracy in Chile. She is a progressive entrepreneur who promotes corporate social responsibility and the involvement of the private sector in projects initiated by the government that aim to benefit the whole country.
Go to Profile#615
Lili Yan Ing
#184785
Overall Influence
Lili Yan Ing is an Indonesian economist. Dr Ing has been appointed as the Lead Advisor to the Minister of Trade of Indonesia since November 2017. Dr Ing served as a Senior Advisor on Trade and Investment at the President’s Office of the Republic of Indonesia from 2015 to 2016. Prior to her current position, she was a Senior Economist at the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia ERIA, serving as a Senior Advisor on Trade and Investment for the Southeast Asian region from 2012 to 2015, and an economist with the World Bank, from 2009 to 2012.
Go to Profile#616
Wendy B. Libby
#104959
Overall Influence
Wendy B. Libby, a native of Brooklyn, New York, is an American college administrator. She attended Cornell University and received a Bachelor's in 1972, an MBA from Cornell's Johnson Graduate School of Management in 1977. She earned her doctorate in Educational Administration from the University of Connecticut in 1994. She was president of Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, the second oldest women's institute in America, from 2003 to 2009. She was named the ninth president of Stetson University in July 2009.
Go to Profile#617
Graciana del Castillo
#190674
Overall Influence
Graciana del Castillo was a Uruguayan economist, professor, writer, businesswoman, and international strategist. At the age of nineteen, she settled in New York City, United States. She studied economics, and received her master's and doctorate degrees at Columbia University, where she was also a professor. She worked at the United Nations International Monetary Fund, specializing in designing economic policies for El Salvador, Kosovo and Afghanistan. She co-founded the consulting firm Macroeconomics Advisory Group with Mario Blejer.
Go to Profile#618
Dale Rogers Marshall
#39859
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Dale Rogers Marshall was an American political scientist and academic administrator, the sixth president of Wheaton College from 1992 to 2004. Biography Marshall, a member of Phi Beta Kappa, earned her bachelor’s degree, with high honors, in government from Cornell University and a master’s degree in political science from University of California, Berkeley, where she studied as a Woodrow Wilson Fellow. She then obtained a Ph.D. in Political Science from UCLA in 1969, where she held a Regents Fellowship. She holds an Honorary Doctorate Degree in Law from Wheaton College .
Go to Profile#619
Ruth Lea, Baroness Lea of Lymm
#187952
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Ruth Jane Lea, Baroness Lea of Lymm, is a British parliamentarian and pro-Brexit political economist. Lady Lea entered HM Civil Service, before being recruited by the Institute of Directors, a private-sector employer lobbyist, as well as working for policy research bodies and the media. She was Arbuthnot Banking Group's Economic Adviser from 2007 to 2022 and served as an Independent Non-Executive Director from 2005 until 2016.
Go to Profile#620
Glenda Glover
#21756
Overall Influence
Glenda Baskin Glover, Ph.D, J.D., CPA, began serving as the eighth president of Tennessee State University on January 2, 2013. Early life and education Glover was born in Memphis, Tennessee, and was raised in the Weaver Road vicinity near Boxtown. She began her educational development as a student at Tennessee State University, where she majored in mathematics. After graduating with honors with a Bachelor of Science degree, she earned the Master of Business Administration at Clark Atlanta University in 1976. She completed her doctorate in business from George Washington University in 1990, a...
Go to Profile#621
Joy Kwesiga
#167668
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Joy Constance Kwesiga is a Ugandan academic, academic administrator, gender specialist, and community activist. She is the vice chancellor of Kabale University, a public institution of higher education in Uganda and accredited by the Uganda National Council for Higher Education in 2005.
Go to Profile#622
Tag Gronberg
#90001
Overall Influence
Theresa Ann "Tag" Gronberg is an art historian with Birkbeck College, University of London. She is a specialist in the art of the Vienna Secession and Viennese coffeehouse culture. Her research interests also include gender and visual culture in 1920s France.
Go to Profile#623
Eva M Meyersson Milgrom
#172246
Overall Influence
Eva Maria Meyersson Milgrom is a Swedish-born American social scientist publishing both in economic and sociology academic journals. She received her Ph.D. from the Department of Sociology at Stockholm University in 1992.
Go to Profile#624
Stefanie von Schnurbein
#72084
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Baroness Stefanie Anna Hildegard von Schnurbein is a German literary scholar, and Professor of Modern Scandinavian Literature at the Humboldt University of Berlin. Biography She belongs to the Schnurbein family, originally from South Tyrol . In the late 16th century the Schnurbein family settled in Augsburg, where they became wealthy silk merchants and members of the free imperial city's hereditary ruling class, the patriciate. The family was ennobled by the Holy Roman Emperor in 1697 and raised to Baronial rank in 1741.
Go to Profile#625
Sun Qixiang
#192195
Overall Influence
Qixiang Sun is associate dean of Peking University's school of economics and chair and C. V. Starr Professor in the Department of Risk Management and Insurance. She also is member and administrative director of the China Finance Council's academic research committee.
Go to Profile#626
Ruth de Krivoy
#84443
Overall Influence
1942 - Present (84 years)
Ruth Osterreicher de Krivoy is a Venezuelan economist specialized on political, monetary and fiscal dynamics. During the early 1970s, she had been vice president of research at the Central Bank of Venezuela, where she played an active role in strengthening economic research as a major instrument of support for monetary policy. In 1992, two months after an attempted coup d'état by Hugo Chavez, she became president of the Central Bank of Venezuela. Her appointment seemed a natural choice, given both her extensive experience and her firm belief in Central Bank independence. She resigned in 1994, amid the Venezuelan banking crisis.
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Patricia Danzon
#192223
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Patricia Danzon is an American economist, currently the Cecilia Moh Professor at Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Bibliography
Go to Profile#628
Beth Stetson
#75933
Overall Influence
Beth Stetson is an American economist, currently the Charles C. and Virginia Ann Weddle Professor of Accounting at University of Oklahoma.
Go to Profile#629
Magda Fusaro
#123400
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Magda Fusaro is a university professor and academic administrator. From December 2006 to March 2018, she held the UNESCO Chair in Communication and Technologies for Development. In January 2018, she was appointed rector of the Université du Québec à Montréal .
Go to Profile#630
Vida Dutton Scudder
1861 - 1954 (93 years)
Julia Vida Dutton Scudder was an American educator, writer, and welfare activist in the social gospel movement. Early life She was born in Madurai, India, on December 15, 1861, the only child of David Coit Scudder and Harriet Louise Scudder. After her father, a Congregationalist missionary, was accidentally drowned in 1862, she and her mother returned to the family home in Boston. Apart from travel in Europe, she attended private secondary schools in Boston, and was graduated from the Boston Girl's Latin School in 1880. Scudder then entered Smith College, where she received her BA degree i...
Go to Profile#631
Theresa Wolfson
1897 - 1972 (75 years)
Theresa Wolfson was an American labor economist and educator. Wolfson is best remembered as the education director of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union during the second half of the 1920s and as a leader of the workers education movement during the 1930s.
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Jessica Blanche Peixotto
1864 - 1941 (77 years)
Jessica Blanche Peixotto was an American educator and writer. Early life and family Jessica Blanche Peixotto was born in New York City, New York, the daughter of Raphael Levy Maduro Peixotto, a prosperous Ohioan involved in trade with the South, and Myrtillie Jessica Davis, originally of Virginia. She had four brothers: Edgar Davis attorney; Ernest Clifford artist and author; Capt. Eustace Maduro director of public school athletics; and Sidney Salzado social worker .
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A. E. Levett
1881 - 1932 (51 years)
Ada Elizabeth Levett , known professionally as A. E. Levett, was an Oxford-educated native of Bodiam, Sussex, who became a pioneering woman economic historian specialising in medieval feudalism. Levett was Vice Principal of St Hilda's College, Oxford, and later took up an appointment to a history chair at Westfield College at the University of London.
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Vera Anstey
1889 - 1976 (87 years)
Vera Anstey was a British economist and noted expert on the economy of India. Anstey is most closely associated with the London School of Economics where she served as a lecturer and chaired the admissions committee, and with the wider University of London where she served as dean of the faculty of economics.
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Kate Claghorn
1864 - 1938 (74 years)
Kate Holladay Claghorn was an American sociologist, economist, statistician, legal scholar, and Progressive Era activist, who became one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
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Grace Raymond Hebard
1861 - 1936 (75 years)
Grace Raymond Hebard was an American historian, suffragist, scholar, writer, political economist, and noted University of Wyoming educator. Hebard's standing as a historian in part rose from her years trekking Wyoming's high plains and mountains seeking first-hand accounts of Wyoming's early pioneers. Today, her books on Wyoming history are sometimes challenged due to her romanticization of the Old West, spurring questions regarding accuracy of her research findings. In particular, her conclusion after decades of field research that Sacajawea was buried in Wyoming's Wind River Indian Reserva...
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Helene Reynard
1875 - 1947 (72 years)
Helene Reynard or Helene Reinherz was a United Kingdom economist and college administrator. She created as a separate entity King's College of Household and Social Science in London and then ran it.
Go to Profile#638
Marion Parris Smith
1879 - Present (147 years)
Marion Parris Smith was a professor of economics at Bryn Mawr College. Biography She was born as Marion Parris on 22 May 1879 in Manhattan to Edward Lowden Parris and Mary Ida Dubois She married William Roy Smith on 11 June 1912 in Manhattan, New York.
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Eveline M. Burns
1900 - 1985 (85 years)
Eveline Mabel Richardson Burns was an American economist, writer and instructor. Born Eveline Mabel Richardson in London, England, she was the only child of Eveline Maud Falkner and Frederick Haig Richardson. Her mother died following her birth, so her father remarried and had three more children. Eveline attended Seatham Secondary School, then entered the London School of Economics at age 16 and graduated in 1920, earning a B.S. with first class honors. In 1922 she married the economist Arthur Robert Burns and the couple emigrated to the United States. After the award of her Ph.D. in 1926, she gained a Laura Spelman Rockefeller Fellowship.
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Elizabeth Baker
1885 - 1973 (88 years)
Elizabeth Faulkner Baker was an American economist and academic who specialized in scientific management and the relationship between employment and technological change, especially the role of women.
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Margaret G. Reid
1896 - 1991 (95 years)
Margaret Gilpin Reid was an economist in the area of household production, housework and non-market activities. Life Margaret Gilpin Reid was born in 1896 in Cardale, Manitoba in Canada, and completed a degree in Home Economics at the University of Manitoba in 1921. She received her PhD from the University of Chicago in 1931 titled The Economics of Household Production. She taught at Connecticut College, Iowa State College and later the University of Chicago, where she received tenure as a Professor of Home Economics and Economics. She became emeritus in 1961.
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Joyce P. Jacobsen
1900 - Present (126 years)
Joyce Penelope Jacobsen is a former President of Hobart and William Smith Colleges. Dr. Jacobsen was elected as the 29th President of Hobart College and the 18th President of William Smith College. Jacobsen is a scholar of economics, an award-winning teacher and an experienced administrator. She began her presidency on July 1, 2019. She is the first woman to serve as president of Hobart and William Smith Colleges.
Go to Profile#643
Alzada Comstock
1888 - 1960 (72 years)
Alzada Peckham Comstock was an economist who taught at Mount Holyoke College. She became a Guggenheim Fellow in 1926. Early life and education Comstock was born in Waterford, Connecticut. She earned a B.A. from Mount Holyoke College in 1910, followed by a master's degree from Columbia University in 1913. In 1921, she completed a Ph.D. at Columbia University.
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Vera Lutz
1912 - 1976 (64 years)
Vera Constance Lutz, , was a British economist. She was married to the German economist Friedrich Lutz. Career Smith was born in Kent, England, and studied at the London School of Economics between 1930 and 1935 for a PhD. In 1937, she married German economist Friedrich Lutz, and the couple moved to Princeton University prior to the start of the Second World War, and moved to Zurich in 1951. Lutz's main areas of study were credit theory, economic development theory and labour economics. Vera and Friedrich's 1951 work Theory of Investment of the Firm was said to have "greatly influenced modern capital theory, and would remain a major source of reference for the next decade".
Go to Profile#645
Clara Eliot
1896 - 1976 (80 years)
Clara Eliot was an economist known for her work in consumer economics. She taught economics at Barnard College for many years. Biography Eliot was born in 1896, the granddaughter of Thomas Lamb Eliot and part of a prominent Unitarian branch of the Eliot family. She did her undergraduate studies at Reed College, which her grandfather had founded, graduating in 1917. She taught at Mills College from 1917 to 1918, and then worked as an assistant to Yale economist Irving Fisher from 1918 to 1920. She also worked as an elementary school teacher; one of her students from this time, Margaret E. Mart...
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Persia Campbell
1898 - 1974 (76 years)
Persia Gwendoline Crawford Campbell was an Australian-born American economist who championed consumer rights worldwide. Early life Persia Crawford Campbell, was born March 15, 1898, at Nerrigundah, New South Wales. She was the daughter of school teachers, Rodolfe Archibald Clarence Campbell and his second wife Beatrice Hunt. Persia was educated in Sydney at Fort Street Girls' High School before going on to university, where she took her B.A from the University of Sydney in 1918, followed by her M.A. in 1920. She had obtained first-class honours in history.
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Katharine Coman
1857 - 1915 (58 years)
Katharine Ellis Coman was an American social activist and professor. She was based at the women-only Wellesley College, Massachusetts, where she created new courses in political economy, in line with her personal belief in social change. As dean, she established a new department of economics and sociology.
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Edith Abbott
1876 - 1957 (81 years)
Edith Abbott was an American economist, statistician, social worker, educator, and author. Abbott was born in Grand Island, Nebraska. Abbott was a pioneer in the profession of social work with an educational background in economics. She was a leading activist in social reform with the ideals that humanitarianism needed to be embedded in education. Abbott was also in charge of implementing social work studies to the graduate level. Though she was met with resistance on her work with social reform at the University of Chicago, she ultimately was successful and was elected as the school's dean in 1924, making her one of the first female deans in the United States.
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Hazel Kyrk
1886 - 1957 (71 years)
Hazel Kyrk was an American economist and pioneer of consumer economics. Early life and education Hazel Kyrk was born in 1886 in Ashley, Ohio and was the only child of Elmer Kyrk, a drayman, and Jane Kyrk, a homemaker.
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Beth Hayes
1955 - 1984 (29 years)
Beth Hayes was an American economist specializing in theoretical microeconomics. She has been memorialized by an award established by the University of Pennsylvania. Educational background Hayes graduated from the honors program at the University of Michigan in 1977 and received her Ph.D. in Economics in 1982 from the University of Pennsylvania, studying under David Cass. Her dissertation, Three Essays in Microeconomic Theory, formed the basis for her foundational work in research on two-part tariffs and asymmetrical information, and insurance contracts.
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