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 Economics,
#4801
Kostiantyn Voblyi
1876 - 1947 (71 years)
Kostiantyn Hryhorovych Voblyi was a Ukrainian economic geographer, scientist economist, professor of the Kyiv University, academician of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences , Vice-president of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences , director of the Institute of Economics . Honored Scientist of Ukraine , awarded the Order of Lenin and the Order of the Red Banner of Labour.
Go to Profile#4802
Morarji Desai
1896 - 1995 (99 years)
Morarji Ranchhodji Desai was an Indian independence activist and politician who served as the 4th Prime Minister of India between 1977 and 1979 leading the government formed by the Janata Party. During his long career in politics, he held many important posts in government such as Chief Minister of Bombay State, Home Minister, Finance Minister and 2nd Deputy Prime Minister of India.
Go to Profile#4803
David Horowitz
1899 - 1979 (80 years)
David Horowitz was an Israeli economist and the first Governor of the Bank of Israel. Biography David Horowitz was born in Drohobych, in Galicia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now in Ukraine. He immigrated to Palestine in 1920 and was one of the first members of Hashomer Hatzair.
Go to Profile#4804
Yehuda Grunfeld
1930 - 1960 (30 years)
Yehuda Grunfeld was an econometrician in the late 1950s. Personal life Grunfeld was born on March 11, 1930. On July 16, 1960, the 30-year-old drowned while rescuing his son from an undertow off the coast of Israel.
Go to Profile#4805
Robert F. Hoxie
1868 - 1916 (48 years)
Robert Franklin Hoxie was an American economist, known for his work on labor history. Personal Hoxie was born in Edmeston, New York to Solomon and Lucy Hoxie. He married Lucy Bennett in 1898 and they had no children. Suffering from ill-health most of his life, it is believed that in a mood of deep depression he ended his own life at the age of 48.
Go to Profile#4806
William Blake
1774 - 1852 (78 years)
William Blake was an English classical economist who contributed to the early theory of purchasing power parity. Life He was born in London on 31 January 1774, the son of William and Alicia Blake. He was educated at Charterhouse School, and entered Trinity College, Cambridge in 1789. He graduated B.A. in 1793 as 7th wrangler, became a Fellow of the college in 1795, and graduated M.A. in 1796. Giving up his fellowship in 1797, he entered Lincoln's Inn, and was called to the bar in 1799.
Go to Profile#4807
Harry A. Millis
1873 - 1948 (75 years)
Harry Alvin Millis was an American civil servant, economist, and educator and who was prominent in the first four decades of the 20th century. He was a prominent educator, and his writings on labor relations were described at his death by several prominent economists as "landmarks". Millis is best known for serving on the "first" National Labor Relations Board, an executive-branch agency which had no statutory authority. He was also the second chairman of the "second" National Labor Relations Board, where he initiated a number of procedural improvements and helped stabilize the Board's enfor...
Go to Profile#4808
John H. Gray
1859 - 1946 (87 years)
John Henry Gray was an American economist. He was a professor of economics at Northwestern University, Carleton College, and the University of Minnesota. In 1914, he served as president of the American Economic Association.
Go to Profile#4809
Bertram Wolfe
1896 - 1977 (81 years)
Bertram David Wolfe was an American scholar, leading communist, and later a leading anti-communist. He authored many works related to communism, including biographical studies of Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Leon Trotsky, and Diego Rivera.
Go to Profile#4810
William Stanley Jevons
#4811
David James Davies
1893 - 1956 (63 years)
David James Davies , known as D. J. Davies, was a Welsh economist, industrialist, essayist, author, political activist, pilot, and an internationalist. Davies was a world traveller before returning home to Wales.
Go to Profile#4812
Edgar Salin
1892 - 1974 (82 years)
Edgar Bernhard Jacques Salin was a German economist, historian, and translator. Born on 10 February 1892 in Frankfurt, he studied political economy and jurisprudence, completing his PhD at Heidelberg University in 1913 with a thesis on the economic development of Alaska under the supervision of Alfred Weber. After habilitating at Heidelberg in 1920 with a monograph on the political thought of Plato, Salin taught there and at Kiel before taking up a position as Professor of National Economy at the University of Basel in 1927, which he held until 1962. He served as Chancellor of Basel University.
Go to Profile#4813
Joseph Shield Nicholson
1850 - 1927 (77 years)
Joseph Shield Nicholson, FBA FRSE was an English economist. Life Nicholson was born in Wrawby in Lincolnshire on 9 November 1850 the only son of Mary Anne Grant and her husband Rev Thomas Nicholson, minister of Banbury. He was educated at Lewisham School in London.
Go to Profile#4814
Gustav Cohn
1840 - 1919 (79 years)
Gustav Cohn was a German economist, noted for his pioneering contributions to the theory and policy of transportation and public finance. He was educated at Berlin and Jena universities. During 1867 and 1868 he was the holder of a fellowship at the Royal Statistical Bureau of Berlin, and in 1869 became privat-docent at the University of Heidelberg, but in the same year accepted an invitation from the Polytechnikum at Riga. Cohn paid a visit to England in 1873, and the fruits of his observation and research were embodied in the masterly production "Untersuchungen über die Englische Eisenbahnpolitik," 2 vols., Leipzig, 1874-75.
Go to Profile#4815
Franklin Ho
1895 - 1975 (80 years)
Franklin Lien Ho was a Chinese economist influential in the Republic of China. He was the director of the Political Department of the Cabinet and later the Vice Minister of Economic Affairs. He was also director general of the Agricultural Credit Administration. He founded the economics department at Nankai University and later served as the university's acting president in 1947 and 1948. He then emigrated to the United States and joined the faculty of Columbia University, retiring in 1960. Ho was elected a member of Academia Sinica in 1962.
Go to Profile#4816
Friedrich Lutz
1901 - 1975 (74 years)
Friedrich August Lutz was a German economist who developed the expectations hypothesis. Life In 1920, Lutz graduated from high school in Stuttgart. He studied economics at Heidelberg University and Humboldt University of Berlin, where he met economist Walter Eucken, and went on to graduate from the University of Tübingen in 1925.
Go to Profile#4817
Henri Hauser
1866 - 1946 (80 years)
Henri Hauser was a French historian, geographer, and economist. A pioneer in the study of the economic history of the early modern period, he also wrote on contemporary economic issues and held the first chair in economic history to be established at a French university.
Go to Profile#4818
Karl Přibram
1877 - 1973 (96 years)
Karl Eman Přibram , also known as "Karl Pribram", was an Austrian-born economist. He is most noted for his work in labor economics, in industrial organization, and in the history of economic thought.
Go to Profile#4819
Benoy Kumar Sarkar
1887 - 1949 (62 years)
Benoy Kumar Sarkar was an Indian social scientist, professor, and nationalist. He founded several institutes in Calcutta, including the Bengali Institute of Sociology, Bengali Asia Academy, Bengali Dante Society, and Bengali Institute of American Culture.
Go to Profile#4820
José Antonio Mayobre
1913 - 1980 (67 years)
José Antonio Mayobre was a Venezuelan economist who worked as an academic economist, a diplomat and international civil servant. He was a Minister of Finance of Venezuela and the Executive Secretary of the ECLAC.
Go to Profile#4821
August Cieszkowski
1814 - 1894 (80 years)
Count August Dołęga Cieszkowski was a Polish philosopher, economist and social and political activist. His Hegelian philosophy influenced the young Karl Marx and action theorists. Biography Cieszkowski was born in Nowa Sucha, in the Duchy of Warsaw. He studied at the Jagiellonian University and in then, from 1832, at the University of Berlin where he became interested in Hegelianism through the lectures of Karl Ludwig Michelet, who became a lifelong friend. He gained his doctorate in philosophy from Heidelberg University in 1838. After his studies he travelled around Europe, visiting France, ...
Go to Profile#4822
Toni Stolper
1890 - 1988 (98 years)
Antonie "Toni" Stolper was an Austrian-German economist and journalist. She fled Europe and immigrated to the United States in 1933 and moved to Canada in 1977. Biography Stolper was born Antonie Kassowitz, daughter of and , in Vienna, Austria in 1890. She studied law in Vienna and economics in Berlin, Germany, earning her doctorate under Heinrich Herkner in 1917. In 1921, she married Gustav Stolper, the editor of a journal called Der Österreichische Volkswirt . In 1925, the couple moved to Berlin, where Gustav Stolper established a new paper, Der Deutsche Volkswirt . Toni Stolper wrote regu...
Go to Profile#4823
Robert M. Haig
1887 - 1953 (66 years)
Robert Murray Haig was an American economist regarded as an expert in public finance and taxation. The concept of Haig–Simons income bears his name. Haig graduated with a PhD in economics from Columbia University in 1914, with a thesis written under supervision of Edwin Robert Anderson Seligman.
Go to Profile#4824
Nicolaas Wilhelmus Posthumus
1880 - 1960 (80 years)
Nicolaas Wilhelmus Posthumus or N.W. Posthumus was a Dutch economic historian, political scientist, and professor at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Posthumus was one of the founders of both the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam and the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences at the University of Amsterdam.
Go to Profile#4825
Edwin Francis Gay
1867 - 1946 (79 years)
Edwin Francis Gay was an American economist, Professor of Economic History and first Dean of the Harvard Business School. Biography Born in Detroit, as the son of a rich businessman, Gay attended schools in the United States and in Switzerland. In 1890, he obtained his A.B. in history and philosophy at the University of Michigan. He returned to Europe to study agriculture, industry, trade and history at universities in Leipzig, Göttingen. Zurich, Berlin and London. In 1892, he married his Michigan classmate Louise Randolph, with whom he shared his research. In 1902, he received his PhD from t...
Go to Profile#4826
Elisha Andrews
1844 - 1917 (73 years)
Elisha Benjamin Andrews was an American economist, soldier, and educator. Early life Andrews was born in Hinsdale, New Hampshire. Career He served in Connecticut regiments during the Civil War as a private and later promoted through ranks to 2nd lieutenant. He was wounded on August 24, 1865, at Petersburg.
Go to Profile#4827
Friedrich Kleinwächter
1838 - 1927 (89 years)
Friedrich Kleinwächter was an Austrian economist. Social life Friedrich Kleinwächter was born in the multiethnic Prag of the times of the imperial Austria-Hungary. His family was German, living next to Czechs, Jews and others. Kleinwächter worked and died in Czernowitz/Bukovina, which was even more multiethnic and became Romanian since 1919. In 1909, Kleinwächter had been ennobled and was authorized to use the prefix "von" before "Kleinwächter".
Go to Profile#4828
Steven L. Heston
1900 - Present (126 years)
Steven "Steve" L. Heston is an American mathematician, economist, and financier. He's also prominently active in the field of gambling-related research, where he sometimes uses the pen name Kim Lee. Education Steve Heston studied Mathematics and Economics at the University of Maryland, wherefrom he obtained his B.S. In 1985, he completed his M.B.A. studies in Industrial Administration at the Carnegie Mellon University's Graduate School of Industrial Administration. From the same university, Carnegie Mellon, in 1987, he received his M.S. in Finance and in 1990 his Ph.D.
Go to Profile#4829
Francesco Vito
1902 - 1968 (66 years)
Francesco Maria Gerard Vito was an Italian economist and university rector. Biography In 1925, he graduated in law from the University of Naples, in 1926 in Economics, and Social and Political Philosophy in 1928. Between 1929 and 1934, completed his studies at schools and universities of Monaco of Bavaria, Berlin, London, New York and Chicago. In 1935, he obtained the chair of Economics at the Faculty of Political Science of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore of Milan and held it until his death. In 1959, after the death of Father Agostino Gemelli he became Rector of the Catholic Univer...
Go to Profile#4830
Jean-Baptiste Say
1767 - 1832 (65 years)
Jean-Baptiste Say was a liberal French economist and businessman who argued in favor of competition, free trade and lifting restraints on business. He is best known for Say's law—also known as the law of markets—which he popularized. Scholars disagree on the surprisingly subtle question of whether it was Say who first stated what is now called Say's law. Moreover, he was one of the first economists to study entrepreneurship and conceptualized entrepreneurs as organizers and leaders of the economy. He was also closely involved in the development of the École spéciale de commerce et d'industrie...
Go to Profile#4831
Raymond de Roover
1904 - 1972 (68 years)
Raymond Adrien Marie de Roover was an economic historian of medieval Europe, whose scholarship explained why Scholastic economic thought is best understood as a precursor of, and wholly compatible with, classical economic thought. In contrast, many mid-20th-century economic historians, such as R.H. Tawney, taught that Karl Marx was the last and greatest of the Scholastic economists.
Go to Profile#4832
Oskar Anderson
1887 - 1960 (73 years)
Oskar Johann Viktor Anderson was a Russian-German mathematician of Baltic German descent. He is best known for his work on mathematical statistics and econometrics. Life Anderson was born from a Baltic German family in Minsk , but soon moved to Kazan . His father, Nikolai Anderson, was professor in Finno-Ugric languages at the University of Kazan. His older brothers were the folklorist Walter Anderson and the astrophysicist Wilhelm Anderson.
Go to Profile#4833
Yrjö Jahnsson
1877 - 1936 (59 years)
Yrjö Jahnsson was a Finnish economics professor at the University of Helsinki, appointed in 1911. He openly criticized the strict monetary policy of the "orthodox" government and central bank in the early 1930s, and was ideologically aligned with the Fennoman movement. Jahnsson achieved business success and amassed a significant fortune during the 1920s and 1930s. His wife, Hilma Jahnsson , used the wealth to establish the Yrjö Jahnsson Foundation.
Go to Profile#4834
Théodore Limperg
1879 - 1961 (82 years)
Théodore Limperg jr. was a Dutch accountant, and Professor in Business economics at the University of Amsterdam. He is particularly known for his contribution to the international debate about replacement costs in the 1920s.
Go to Profile#4835
Neil H. Jacoby
1909 - 1979 (70 years)
Neil Herman Jacoby was a university professor and public servant and was widely recognized as an expert on matters of taxation, finance, economic policy, and business-government relationships. Early life He was born in Dundurn, Saskatchewan, Canada, and received his B.A. in 1930 from the University of Saskatchewan. He became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1937 and received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1938.
Go to Profile#4836
Götz Briefs
1889 - 1974 (85 years)
Götz Briefs was a Catholic social theorist, social ethicist, social philosopher and political economist, who together with Gustav Gundlach, SJ influenced the social teachings of Pope Pius XI. Biography In 1908, Briefs began to study history and philosophy at the University of Munich. As it was customary in German academic circles at the time, he frequently switched universities, moving in 1909 to Bonn, and later in 1911 to Freiburg. In Freiburg, he became a member of K.D.St. V. Wildenstein Freiburg im Breisgau, a Catholic student fraternity that belong to the Cartellverband der katholischen deutschen Studentenverbindungen.
Go to Profile#4837
Erich Gutenberg
1897 - 1984 (87 years)
Erich Gutenberg was an influential German economist. He is considered the founder of modern German business studies after World War II. Gutenberg used microeconomy to explain the functioning of the enterprise. Therefore, he also developed a new production function. With a system of inputs and outputs under management control he explained how a firm could be efficient.
Go to Profile#4838
Bonamy Price
1807 - 1888 (81 years)
Bonamy Price was a British political economist. Biography He was born at Saint Peter Port, Guernsey, the son of Frederick Price and his wife Maria Martha Vardon. He lived on the island until age 14.
Go to Profile#4839
Émile Louis Victor de Laveleye
1822 - 1892 (70 years)
Émile Louis Victor de Laveleye was a Belgian economist. He was one of the co-founders of the Institut de Droit International in 1873. Biography De Lavaleye was born in Bruges, and educated there and at the Collège Stanislas in Paris, a celebrated establishment in the hands of the Oratorians.
Go to Profile#4840
Erwin Rothbarth
1913 - 1944 (31 years)
Erwin Rothbarth was a German economist and statistician. He worked as a research assistant for John Maynard Keynes and made important contributions to the measurement of GDP and the modelling of individual consumption.
Go to Profile#4841
Dorothy Brady
1903 - 1977 (74 years)
Dorothy Elizabeth Stahl Brady was an American mathematician and economist. She was a professor of economics at Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania from 1958 to 1970. Early life Born in Elk River, Minnesota, she grew up in Portland, Oregon, attending Lincoln High School and later Reed College studying mathematics and physics. She was married to fellow Reed student Robert A. Brady from 1924 to 1936, they had a son in 1933.
Go to Profile#4842
Calvin B. Hoover
1897 - 1974 (77 years)
Calvin Bryce Hoover was a noted economist and professor. He spent 1929–1930 in Moscow and wrote The Economic Life of Soviet Russia in 1931. Following his travels to Soviet Russia he also traveled to and researched the economies of Germany, Italy, France, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Australia. He is considered the founder of the field of comparative economic systems.
Go to Profile#4843
Alfred Sohn-Rethel
1899 - 1990 (91 years)
Alfred Sohn-Rethel was a French-born German Marxian economist and philosopher especially interested in epistemology. His main intellectual achievement was the publication of Intellectual and Manual Labour: A Critique of Epistemology. He also wrote about the relationship between German industry and National Socialism.
Go to Profile#4844
Harold S. Sloan
1888 - 1988 (100 years)
Harold Stephenson Sloan was an economist who wrote extensively and taught in the field of economics. He served as the executive director of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which was established by his older brother, who was the President and chief executive officer of General Motors.
Go to Profile#4845
Franklin Henry Giddings
1855 - 1931 (76 years)
Franklin Henry Giddings was an American sociologist and economist. Biography Giddings was born at Sherman, Connecticut. He graduated from Union College . For ten years he wrote items for the Springfield, Massachusetts Republican and the Daily Union. In 1888 he was appointed lecturer in political science at Bryn Mawr College; in 1894 he became professor of sociology at Columbia University. From 1892 to 1905 he was a vice president of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.
Go to Profile#4846
William Petty
1623 - 1687 (64 years)
Sir William Petty FRS was an English economist, physician, scientist and philosopher. He first became prominent serving Oliver Cromwell and the Commonwealth in Ireland. He developed efficient methods to survey the land that was to be confiscated and given to Cromwell's soldiers. He also remained a significant figure under King Charles II and King James II, as did many others who had served Cromwell.
Go to Profile#4847
Jean Gustave Courcelle-Seneuil
1813 - 1892 (79 years)
Jean Gustave Courcelle-Seneuil /ʒɑ̃ɡusˈtav kuʁˈsɛl səˈnœj/ was a French economist. He is considered to be the founder of classical economics and economic liberalism in Chile. Early life and education Courcelle-Seneuil was born at Senouillac on 22 December 1813. He attended Royal College of Poitiers at University of Poitiers and later University of Paris, where he received a law degree in 1835.
Go to Profile#4848
Earl C. Crockett
1903 - 1975 (72 years)
Earl Clarkson Crockett was an American economist who served as acting president of Brigham Young University from 1963 to 1964 while Ernest L. Wilkinson was running for the United States Senate. Prior to this Crockett has been BYU's academic vice president.
Go to Profile#4849
Orlando Letelier
1932 - 1976 (44 years)
Marcos Orlando Letelier del Solar was a Chilean economist, politician and diplomat during the presidency of Salvador Allende. A refugee from the military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, Letelier accepted several academic positions in Washington, D.C. following his exile from Chile. In 1976, agents of Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional , the Pinochet regime's secret police, assassinated Letelier in Washington via the use of a car bomb. These agents had been working in collaboration with members of the Coordination of United Revolutionary Organizations, an anti-Castro militant group.
Go to Profile#4850
Albert J. Meyer
1919 - 1983 (64 years)
Albert Julius Meyer was an American economist who taught at Harvard University for 28 years. Meyers specialized in the economies of south-west Asia. Meyer was born in Hawarden, Iowa. obtained his bachelors and master's degrees at the University of California at Los Angeles. In 1947 he received his doctorate from Johns Hopkins University. Among his seminal papers was "Entrepreneurship the missing link in the Arab states?" In 1955, he started teaching at Harvard. While at Harvard he produced two major books:Middle Eastern Capitalism: Nine essays andThe Economy of Cyprus Myers was chief of mission for the Special U.S.
Go to Profile