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 Economics,
#4451
Monte S. Nyman
#94602
Overall Influence
1929 - 2011 (82 years)
Monte Steven Nyman was president of Southern Virginia University from 2003 to 2004. He had previously been academic vice president at SVU and a professor of religion at Brigham Young University . As a young man Nyman served a mission in the North Central States Mission of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints . Nyman received bachelor's and master's degrees in physical education from Utah State University. He later received a doctorate from BYU in educational administration. Prior to joining the BYU faculty, he was an Institute of Religion director in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
Go to Profile#4452
William Bradshaw, Baron Bradshaw
#140350
Overall Influence
1936 - Present (90 years)
William Peter Bradshaw, Baron Bradshaw , commonly known as Bill Bradshaw, is a British academic and politician. A Liberal Democrat member of the House of Lords, he was formerly also a County Councillor in Oxfordshire from 1993 until his resignation in January 2008.
Go to Profile#4453
Zabihollah Safa
#25871
Overall Influence
1911 - 1999 (88 years)
Zabihollah Safa was a scholar and professor Emeritus of Iranian Studies at the University of Tehran. His main contribution to the field of Iranian studies is seen in his seminal and comprehensive works on the history of Persian literature. He was also a regular contributor to the Encyclopaedia Iranica.
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William Jasper Spillman
1863 - 1931 (68 years)
William Jasper Spillman is considered to be the founding father of agricultural economics. In addition, he is notable for being the only American to independently rediscover Mendel's laws of genetics.
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Wilhelm Georg Friedrich Roscher
1817 - 1894 (77 years)
Wilhelm Georg Friedrich Roscher was a German economist from Hanover. Biography Roscher studied at Göttingen, where he became a member of Corps Hannovera, and Berlin, and obtained a professorship at Göttingen in 1844 and subsequently at Leipzig in 1848.
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Michael James Farrell
1926 - 1975 (49 years)
Michael James Farrell , was a Cambridge economist professionally known as M. J. Farrell. Academically he is remembered largely for the celebrated parametric measure of productive efficiency that he published in 1957.
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F. A. Harper
1905 - 1973 (68 years)
Floyd Arthur "Baldy" Harper was an American academic, economist and writer who was best known for founding the Institute for Humane Studies in 1961. Personal life Baldy Harper was born and raised in Middleville, Michigan and graduated from Michigan State University. He went on to obtain a doctorate in agricultural economics from Cornell University. Economist Herbert J. Davenport was influential to Harper during his time at Cornell.
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Bruce Alan Mccarl
#4459
Giuseppe Ugo Papi
1893 - 1989 (96 years)
Giuseppe Ugo Papi was an Italian economist. Papi was among the contributors of the Fascist finance magazine Lo Stato from 1930. He was the rector of the University "La Sapienza" of Rome from November 1953 to May 1966. He was also a Knight of the Civil Order of Savoy and a member of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei.
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Bernhard Harms
1876 - 1939 (63 years)
Christoph Bernhard Cornelius Harms was a German economist and one of the first professors to undertake research in the field of international economics. He founded the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, Germany's leading economic research institute, in 1914. Harms was Chair of Economics at the University of Kiel and head of the Institute until he was dismissed from office in 1933 by Nazi Party officials.
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Samson Olajuwon Kokumo Olayide
1928 - 1984 (56 years)
Samson Olajuwon Kokumo Olayide , was an academic and professor of agricultural economics. Olayide was born to Josiah Ogunpoopo Olayide and Mariam Olayide . He married Theresa Folashade Olayide in 1961. And gave birth to four children [Biodun, Tokunbo, Oluwole, and Olajide]
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Mykhailo Volobuiev
1903 - 1972 (69 years)
Mykhailo Symonovych Volobuiev was a Ukrainian economist of Russian origin of the 1930s. He was a researcher at the Research Institute of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in Kharkiv and a major contributing thinker and advocate for the economic self-sufficiency of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.
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Theodore Gregory
1890 - 1970 (80 years)
Sir Theodore Emmanuel Gugenheim Gregory was a British economist. Biography Theodore Gregory was born in London on 10 September 1890. Gregory was educated at Dame Alice Owen's School in Islington. He attended the London School of Economics and Political Science. Gregory was an Assistant and Lecturer at the LSE between 1913 and 1919. Gregory was Cassel Reader in International Trade at the LSE in 1920. Gregory was Sir E. Cassel Professor of Economics in the University of London between 1927 and 1937. He was Dean of the Faculty of Economics at London University between 1927 and 1930. Gregory was a Senator of London University between 1928 and 1930.
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Wilhelm Abel
1904 - 1985 (81 years)
Wilhelm Abel was a German economist. He is particularly noted for his contributions to agricultural economics and economic history. Abel's first and most well known book was Agrarkrisen und Agrarkonjunktur published originally in 1935. It details the agrarian history of Europe from the 13th to the 20th centuries, focusing on periods of expansion and contraction corresponding to population. Other notable works include Die Wüstungen des ausgehenden Mittelalters, a study of medieval abandoned villages, Geschichte der deutschen Landwirtschaft, a history of German rural life and economy, and Mass...
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Adam Heydel
1893 - 1941 (48 years)
Adam Zdzisław Heydel was a Polish economist and representative of the Cracow School of Economics, a type of economic liberalism. Biography Early life and education Adam Heydel was the son of Zdzisław and Maria Heydel, his brother named Wojciech. He was a student at John III Sobieski High School and later studied in Moscow and Kyiv. In 1922 he studied law at the Jagiellonian University, where he got his doctorate. In the years 1921–1922 he worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 1925 he got a habilitation in the field of political economy. Two years later he became a lecturer of economi...
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David Davidson
1854 - 1942 (88 years)
David Davidson was a Swedish economist. He was professor of economics and taxation law at Uppsala University from 1890 to 1919. He founded and edited the journal Ekonomisk Tidskrift . Via the journal, Davidson has been credited with switching Swedish economic analysis from one that followed the German Historicist approach to one in which Anglo-American style economic theory played a more dominant role.
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Albert Gallatin
1761 - 1849 (88 years)
Abraham Alfonse Albert Gallatin was a Genevan–American politician, diplomat, ethnologist and linguist. Often described as "America's Swiss Founding Father", he was a leading figure in the early years of the United States, helping shape the new republic's financial system and foreign policy. Gallatin was a prominent member of the Democratic-Republican Party, represented Pennsylvania in both chambers of Congress, and held several influential roles across four presidencies, most notably as the longest serving U.S. Secretary of the Treasury. He is also known for his contributions to academia, nam...
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Eugen Schmalenbach
1873 - 1955 (82 years)
Eugen Schmalenbach was a German academic and economist. He was born in Halver, and attended the Leipzig College of Commerce starting in 1898. That college later became part of Leipzig University, only to emerge again as the Handelshochschule Leipzig.
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Robert Lee Hale
1884 - 1969 (85 years)
Robert Lee Hale was an American lawyer and economist. He earned an economics degree at Harvard University, and then worked at Columbia Law School. He is known as a legal realist, and his work focused particularly on the distributive impact of legal rules.
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Harald Ludvig Westergaard
1853 - 1936 (83 years)
Harald Ludvig Westergaard was a Danish statistician and economist known for his work in demography and the history of statistics. Harald Westergaard was born in Copenhagen and apart from a period studying in England and Germany in 1877-78 he lived there all his life. His subject at the University of Copenhagen was mathematics but he became interested in economics and, while he was in England, he seems to have met William Stanley Jevons. In the preface to the second edition of the Theory of Political Economy Jevons refers to Westergaard's mathematical suggestions. However, after this spectac...
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E. Wight Bakke
1903 - 1971 (68 years)
Edward Wight Bakke was an American sociology and economics professor at Yale University who achieved prominence in the field of industrial relations. He was a Sterling Professor, Yale's highest level of academic rank, and served as director of the Yale Labor and Management Center from its founding in 1945 until its dissolution in the late 1950s. The author, co-author, or co-editor of thirteen books, Bakke made major contributions to the study of unemployment and organizational theory.
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Georg Obrecht
1547 - 1612 (65 years)
Georg Obrecht was a German law professor and prominent developer of Cameralist thought. Biography Obrecht was born in 1547. He studied law at a variety of universities, including Tübingen, Heidelberg, Besançon, Dôle, and Orléans. After escaping death as a Protestant amidst the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, he returned to Strasbourg and eventually obtained a professorship at his own high school.
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Robert Hale Merriman
1908 - 1938 (30 years)
Robert Hale Merriman was an American doctoral student who fought with the Republican forces in Spain during the Spanish Civil War. He was killed while commanding the Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the International Brigades.
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Charles Rist
1874 - 1955 (81 years)
Charles Rist was a French economist. He was elected an International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1932 and an International Member of the American Philosophical Society in 1938. His son is Léonard Rist.
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Harold Thayer Davis
1892 - 1974 (82 years)
Harold Thayer Davis was a mathematician, statistician, and econometrician, known for the Davis distribution. Davis received in 1915 his A.B. from Colorado College, in 1919 his A.M. from Harvard University, and in 1926 his PhD under Edward Burr Van Vleck from the University of Wisconsin, after working there as a mathematics instructor from 1920 to 1923. From 1923 to 1937 he taught mathematics at the Indiana University Bloomington, becoming a professor there. From February to August 1937 he was acting research director of the Cowles Commission. Davis became a professor in 1937 at Northwestern University in the mathematics department and the chair of the department in 1942.
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Henry B. Gardner
1863 - 1939 (76 years)
Henry Brayton Gardner was an American economist. He was a faculty member at Brown University from 1890 until 1928, serving as the first Eastman Professor of Political Economy from 1919 to 1928. In 1919, he served as president of the American Economic Association.
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Edmund J. James
1855 - 1925 (70 years)
Edmund Janes James was an American academic, president of the University of Illinois from 1904 to 1920, and the primary founder, first president and first editor for the American Academy of Political and Social Science. He also served as the 7th president of Northwestern University from 1902 to 1904.
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Vasily Sergeevich Nemchinov
1894 - 1964 (70 years)
#4479
William Fellner
1905 - 1983 (78 years)
William John Fellner was a Hungarian-American economist and Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale University from 1952 until his retirement in 1973. Born in Budapest, Austria-Hungary, he studied at the University of Budapest, the ETH Zurich and the Frederick William University in Berlin, where he received his Ph.D. in economics in 1929, . Fellner served on the Council of Economic Advisers from 1973 to 1975.
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Alexander Ivanovich Chuprov
1842 - 1908 (66 years)
Alexander Ivanovich Chuprov was a professor of political economy and statistics at Moscow University whose lectures provided the standard introduction to economics for late 19th-century Russian students.
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Sidney Webb, 1st Baron Passfield
1859 - 1947 (88 years)
Sidney James Webb, 1st Baron Passfield, was a British socialist, economist and reformer, who co-founded the London School of Economics. He was an early member of the Fabian Society in 1884, joining, like George Bernard Shaw, three months after its inception. Along with his wife Beatrice Webb and with Annie Besant, Graham Wallas, Edward R. Pease, Hubert Bland and Sydney Olivier, Shaw and Webb turned the Fabian Society into the pre-eminent politico-intellectual society in Edwardian England. He wrote the original, pro-nationalisation Clause IV for the British Labour Party.
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Konstantin Ostrovityanov
1892 - 1969 (77 years)
Konstantin Vasilyevich Ostrovityanov was a Soviet Marxist economist, academic and public figure. Biography He was born into the family of a village priest. In 1912 he graduated from the Tambov Theological Seminary. In the same year he entered the Kiev Commercial Institute and a year later he transferred to the Moscow Commercial Institute, from which he graduated in 1917. From 1914, Ostrovityanov was a member of the Bolshevik faction of the RSDLP.
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William Lyon Mackenzie King
1874 - 1950 (76 years)
William Lyon Mackenzie King was a Canadian statesman and politician who was the tenth prime minister of Canada for three non-consecutive terms from 1921 to 1926, 1926 to 1930, and 1935 to 1948. A Liberal, he was the dominant politician in Canada from the early 1920s to the late 1940s. King is best known for his leadership of Canada throughout the Great Depression and the Second World War. He played a major role in laying the foundations of the Canadian welfare state and established Canada's international reputation as a middle power fully committed to world order. With a total of 21 years an...
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Karl Heinrich Rau
1792 - 1870 (78 years)
Karl Heinrich Rau was a German political economist. Life Early career Rau was born at Erlangen, Bavaria. He studied from 1808 to 1812 at the University of Erlangen, where he afterwards remained as a Privatdozent. In 1814 he obtained the prize offered by the academy of Göttingen for the best treatment of the question how the disadvantages arising from the abolition of trade guilds might be removed. His memoir, greatly enlarged, was published in 1816 under the title Über das Zunftwesen und die Folgen seiner Aufhebung. In the same year appeared his Primae lineae historiae politices.
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William F. Willoughby
1867 - 1960 (93 years)
William Franklin Willoughby was an author of public administration texts including works on budgeting. He often worked with his twin brother, Westel W. Willoughby. He graduated from Johns Hopkins University, 1885
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Ignaz Jastrow
1856 - 1937 (81 years)
Ignaz Jastrow was a German economist and historian. Biography He was educated at the universities of Breslau, Berlin, and Göttingen. He became a university docent at Berlin in 1885 and was Leopold von Ranke's assistant in historical work. In 1904 he pursued industrial investigations in the United States, and in 1905 became professor of Administrative Science at Berlin. One daughter, Elisabeth Jastrow, was a classical archaeologist; the other Beate Jastrow Hahn, was an accomplished horticulturalist and author of 5 books. His granddaughter, Cornelia Oberlander was a highly respected landscape ...
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Allan George Barnard Fisher
1895 - 1976 (81 years)
Allan George Barnard Fisher was a New Zealand-born economist. Perhaps his most notable contribution was to investigate economic development in terms of the sequential dominance of different sectors of the economy: the primary, secondary and tertiary sectors .
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Luigi Cossa
1831 - 1896 (65 years)
Luigi Cossa , Italian economist, was born in Milan. Life Educated at the universities of Pavia, Vienna and Leipzig, he was appointed professor of political economy at Pavia in 1858. Apart from this Cossa was the author of several other works which established him a high reputation.
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Frederik Zeuthen
1888 - 1959 (71 years)
Frederik Ludvig Bang Zeuthen was a Danish economist. He became an internationally recognized economist in the 1930s and published his research in English, French and German, as well as Danish. He was especially known for his theoretical microeconomics work in general equilibrium theory and the theories of market influences and pricing. He was one of the pioneers of the mathematical theory of monopolistic competition. At the same time, he was interested in social policy and distribution of income.
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Stafford Cripps
1889 - 1952 (63 years)
Sir Richard Stafford Cripps was a British Labour Party politician, barrister, and diplomat. A wealthy lawyer by background, he first entered Parliament at a by-election in 1931, and was one of a handful of Labour frontbenchers to retain his seat at the general election that autumn. He became a leading spokesman for the left-wing and co-operation in a Popular Front with Communists before 1939, in which year he was expelled from the Labour Party.
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Clair Wilcox
1898 - 1970 (72 years)
Clair Wilcox was an American economist. He was on the faculty of Swarthmore College from 1927 to 1968. He chaired the International Trade Conference, which resulted in the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade.
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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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İdris Küçükömer
1925 - 1987 (62 years)
İdris Küçükömer was a Turkish academic, philosopher and economist whose views has been influential in Turkish politics. He developed an alternative interpretation of Kemalism from the mid-1960s to his death.
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Dag Hammarskjöld
1905 - 1961 (56 years)
Dag Hjalmar Agne Carl Hammarskjöld was a Swedish economist and diplomat who served as the second Secretary-General of the United Nations from April 1953 until his death in a plane crash in September 1961. As of 2023, he remains the youngest person to have held the post, having been only 47 years old when he was appointed. He was a son of Hjalmar Hammarskjöld, who served as Prime Minister of Sweden from 1914 to 1917.
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Johann Beckmann
1739 - 1811 (72 years)
Johann Beckmann was a German scientific author and coiner of the word technology, to mean the science of trades. He was the first man to teach technology and write about it as an academic subject. Life He was born on 4 June 1739 at Hoya in Hanover, where his father was postmaster and receiver of taxes. He was educated at Stade and the university of Göttingen, where he studied theology, mathematics, physics, natural history, and public finance and administration. After completing his studies, in 1762 he made a study tour through Brunswick and the Dutch Republic examining mines, factories, natu...
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Leo Harmaja
1880 - 1949 (69 years)
Leo Harmaja was a Finnish economist and statistician and professor of economics. Leo Harmaja graduated from the Mikkeli Lyceum in 1898 and then studied at the University of Helsinki, graduating with a bachelor's degree in philosophy in 1903 and a licentiate in philosophy and a doctorate in philosophy in 1907. Harmaja's dissertation was on the implementation of the Gothenburg system in Finland.
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Wilhelm Lexis
1837 - 1914 (77 years)
Wilhelm Lexis , full name Wilhelm Hector Richard Albrecht Lexis, was a German statistician, economist, and social scientist. The Oxford Dictionary of Statistics cites him as a "pioneer of the analysis of demographic time series". Lexis is largely remembered for two items that bear his name—the Lexis ratio and the Lexis diagram.
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Matthew B. Hammond
1868 - 1933 (65 years)
Matthew Brown Hammond was an American economist. He was a professor of economics and sociology at Ohio State University since 1904. Hammond earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan in 1891, and PhD in economics from Columbia University in 1898.
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Carl C. Plehn
1867 - 1945 (78 years)
Carl Copping Plehn was an American economist. He was a professor of public finance at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1893 to 1937. In 1923, he served as the 25th president of the American Economic Association.
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Alfred Amonn
1883 - 1962 (79 years)
Alfred Amonn was an Austrian economist . He studied law and economics at the universities of Innsbruck and Vienna, being named an associate professor at the University of Freiburg in 1910. He taught as a professor at Czernowitz University , German Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague , Tokyo University , University of Berne .
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