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 …
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List of the most influential female people in Education,
#551
Annette Michelson
#105567
Overall Influence
1922 - 2018 (96 years)
Annette Michelson was an American art and film critic and writer. Her work contributed to the fields of cinema studies and the avant-garde in visual culture. Biography Born in 1922, Michelson graduated from Hunter College High School circa 1940 and Brooklyn College in 1948. Between 1956 and 1966, she was art editor and critic for the Paris edition of the New York Herald Tribune while also writing for Arts Magazine and Art International. She worked as a writer for Artforum, where she edited the influential issues on 'Eisenstein/Brakhage' in 1973 and the 'Special Film Issue' in 1973. Togethe...
Go to Profile#552
Josine Ianco-Starrels
#86151
Overall Influence
1926 - 2019 (93 years)
Josine Ianco-Starrels was a Romanian-born American art curator who worked as a museum director in Los Angeles, California. Background Ianco-Starrels was born in Bucharest in 1926 and her family fled to Israel, then Palestine, during World War II. She was the daughter of Amélie Micheline "Lily" Ackermann and Marcel Janco, who was an artist, an architect and one of the founding members of Dadaism. She married Harold Manson in 1950 and moved to New York where she studied at the Art Students League of New York. Her second marriage was with Herbert Kline, a documentary filmmaker. She was married t...
Go to Profile#553
Nancy C. Maryboy
#103461
Overall Influence
Nancy Cottrell Maryboy is a Cherokee and Navajo Indigenous science expert and educator. Maryboy is the president of the Indigenous Education Institute, an organization she founded in 1995 to apply traditional Indigenous knowledge to contemporary settings. Much of her work has focused on Indigenous astronomy and she has written several books on Navajo astronomy.
Go to Profile#554
June Youatt
#137532
Overall Influence
June Youatt is an American university professor and former administrator, holding the posts of Professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies as well as Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs at Michigan State University .
Go to Profile#555
Evelyn Byrd Harrison
#72971
Overall Influence
1920 - 2012 (92 years)
Evelyn Byrd Harrison was an American classical scholar and archaeologist. She was Edith Kitzmiller Professor of the History of Fine Arts at the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University and was for more than 60 years associated with the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Harrison specialized in 5th century B.C. Athenian Sculpture.
Go to Profile#556
Vanessa Williams
#105222
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Vanessa Lynn Williams is an American singer, actress, model, producer, and dancer. She gained recognition as the first African-American woman to receive the Miss America title when she was crowned Miss America 1984, but resigned her title amid a media controversy surrounding nude photographs of her being published in Penthouse magazine. Thirty-two years later, Williams was offered a public apology during the Miss America 2016 pageant for the events.
Go to Profile#557
Mamie Locke
#143505
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Mamie Evelyn Locke is an American politician and educator. A Democrat, she was a member of the Hampton, Virginia city council 1996–2004, and mayor 2000–2004. Education Locke received a B.A. degree in history and political science from Tougaloo College in 1976. She then attended Atlanta University for advanced political science studies, receiving an M.A. in 1978 and a Ph.D. in 1984. She also completed a program in Middle Eastern studies at the American University in Cairo in 1986.
Go to Profile#558
Charmaine Nelson
#104473
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Charmaine Andrea Nelson is a Canadian art historian, educator, author, and independent curator. Nelson was a full professor of art history at McGill University until June 2020 when she joined NSCAD University to develop the Institute for the Study of Canadian Slavery. She is the first tenured Black professor of art history in Canada. Nelson's research interests include the visual culture of slavery, race and representation, Black Canadian studies and African Canadian history as well as critical theory, post-colonial studies, Black feminist scholarship, Transatlantic Slavery Studies, and Black Diaspora Studies.
Go to Profile#559
Tamar Garb
#112214
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Tamar Garb is Durning Lawrence Professor in the Department of History of Art at University College London. A researcher of French art of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Garb has published numerous catalogue essays and books that address feminism, the body, sexuality, and gender in cultural representations.
Go to Profile#560
Anne Corn
#174238
Overall Influence
Anne Lesley Corn is an American educator, author, researcher, and advocate for those with low vision or blindness. Corn herself has low vision—she is legally blind—and her personal experience has informed and inspired her research and advocacy.
Go to Profile#561
Candace Walkington
#149378
Overall Influence
Candace Walkington is an associate professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning at Southern Methodist University, and a recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.
Go to Profile#562
Faith Osier
#102114
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Faith Hope Among’in Osier is a Kenyan immunologist, paediatrician and educator. Education Faith Osier was born in Kenya in 1972. trained the University of Nairobi, where she obtained her MBChB degree in 1996. She worked in the Coast General Provincial Hospital for two years, before joining Kilifi District Hospital. She completed a Masters in Human Immunity at the University of Liverpool, where she was awarded a prize for being the best student of the year. In 2008 she earned a PhD from the Open University. Her thesis was entitled Immune responses to polymorphic antigens and protection against severe malaria in Kenyan children and was supervised by Kevin Marsh.
Go to Profile#563
Marusya Bociurkiw
#133579
Overall Influence
1958 - Present (68 years)
Marusya Bociurkiw is a Canadian born, Ukrainian film-maker, writer, scholar, and activist. She has published six books, including a novel, poetry collection, short story collection, and a memoir. Her narrative and critical writing have been published in a variety of journals and collections. Bociurkiw has also directed and co-directed ten films and videos which have been screened at film festivals on several continents. Her work appears in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, the National Archives of Canada, and many university libraries. She founded or co-founded the media org...
Go to Profile#564
Alessandra Comini
#107521
Overall Influence
1934 - Present (92 years)
Alessandra Comini is an American art historian and curator. She is University Distinguished Professor of Art History Emerita at Southern Methodist University in University Park, Texas. Proficient in music and languages as well as art history, Comini brought an interdisciplinary approach to her study of the arts in Austria and Germany at the turn of the 20th century, an approach particularly suited to the integrated art forms of fin-de-siècle Vienna.
Go to Profile#565
Cindy Gnadinger
#180473
Overall Influence
Cindy Gnadinger is an American educator and academic administrator, currently serving as the 15th President of Carroll University in Waukesha, Wisconsin. Early life and education A native of Shepherdsville, Kentucky, Gnadinger earned a Bachelor of Science from Western Kentucky University and a Master of Education and Doctor of Education from the University of Louisville. Gnadinger was the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship in 2013, allowing her to study in France.
Go to Profile#566
Diana Cavallo
#92449
Overall Influence
1931 - 2017 (86 years)
Diana Cavallo was an American novelist, educator, playwright, and performer. Biography Early life and education Cavallo was born in Philadelphia in 1931, the daughter of Genuino and Josephine Cavallo. She grew up in an Italian neighborhood of South Philadelphia, where she attended public schools. Her grandparents, who lived with the family, spoke the Abruzzese dialect; Cavallo learned Italian from them, and later based two characters in her first novel on them. As a teenager, she moved with her family to Upper Darby, Pennsylvania. She attended the University of Pennsylvania and spent time in Florence, Italy, as a Fulbright scholar.
Go to Profile#567
Midori
#135943
Overall Influence
is a sexologist, educator, author, artist, speaker, and coach. Midori wrote the first English language book with instruction on Japanese rope bondage and continues to write on alternative sexual practices, including BDSM and sexual fetishism, bondage, erotic fiction, and more. She teaches classes, presents at conferences, coaches individuals and professionals, and facilitates in-depth weekend intensives. She is based in San Francisco, California.
Go to Profile#568
Daria Nina Love
#94409
Overall Influence
1946 - 2001 (55 years)
Daria Nina Love was an Australian veterinary microbiologist and educator. She was the first woman to be awarded the University of Sydney Medal for Veterinary Science and the first woman in the Faculty of Veterinary Science to be awarded a PhD , for her thesis entitled ‘Studies on virus host-cell relationships of a feline calicivirus’. She was also the first woman to become an associate professor in the Faculty of Veterinary Science, although her bids to become a full professor were unsuccessful. In 1988, she became the first woman in Australia to be awarded a Doctor of Veterinary Science on ...
Go to Profile#569
Lillian B. Miller
#128969
Overall Influence
1923 - 1997 (74 years)
Lillian B. Miller was an American art historian who served as historian of American culture at the National Portrait Gallery. She was known for her work studying Charles Willson Peale and his family.
Go to Profile#570
Kathryn M. Rudy
#156877
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Kathryn Margaret Rudy FBA FRSE is a manuscript historian at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. She is best known for her forensic approach to medieval books, and has pioneered the use of the densitometer to measure the grime that original readers deposited in their books. Her research focuses on the medieval reception of manuscripts, how they were manipulated and handled, and how book-making skills were lost with the advent of the printing industry.
Go to Profile#571
Marilyn Stokstad
#39918
Overall Influence
1929 - 2016 (87 years)
Marilyn Jane Stokstad was an American art historian, educator, and curator. A scholar of medieval and Spanish art, Stokstad was Judith Harris Murphy Distinguished Professor of Art History Emeritus at the University of Kansas, and also served as director of the Spencer Museum of Art.
Go to Profile#572
Doris Davenport
#90677
Overall Influence
1949 - Present (77 years)
Doris Davenport, sometimes styled as doris davenport , is a writer, educator, and literary and performance poet. She wrote an essay featured in This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color entitled "The Pathology of Racism: A Conversation with Third World Wimmin." She also focuses her efforts on poetry and education.
Go to Profile#573
Elizabeth Sears
#171342
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Elizabeth Langsford Sears is the George H. Forsyth Jr. Collegiate Professor of History of Art at the University of Michigan. She is known for the study of European medieval art and the historiography of art.
Go to Profile#574
Dana Claxton
#131795
Overall Influence
1959 - Present (67 years)
Dana Claxton is a Hunkpapa Lakota filmmaker, photographer, and performance artist. Her work looks at stereotypes, historical context, and gender studies of Indigenous peoples of the Americas, specifically those of the First Nations. In 2007, she was awarded an Eiteljorg Fellowship for Native American Fine Art.
Go to Profile#575
Pao-sheng Hsu
#75304
Overall Influence
Pao-sheng Hsu is a mathematics educator, Career Hsu completed her PhD under George Bachman at Polytechnic University in 1975; her dissertation was titled An Application of Compactification: Some Theorems on Maximal Ideals.
Go to Profile#576
Bette Talvacchia
#81381
Overall Influence
1951 - Present (75 years)
Bette Lou Talvacchia is an American art historian and educator. Talvacchia is the Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Art History Emeritus at the University of Connecticut. Career Talvacchia earned a Master of Arts in art history from the University of Texas at Austin in 1975. There, she wrote a thesis on the Italian Futurist artists Giacomo Balla and Filippo Tommaso Marinetti. Talvacchia then continued on to Stanford University to receive a Doctor of Philosophy in Art History in 1981. Her doctoral dissertation was on the work of Giulio Romano from the Ducal Palace in Mantua, under t...
Go to Profile#577
Marcia Pointon
#99756
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Marcia Pointon is a historian of British art. She trained at the University of Manchester, receiving her PhD there in 1974. From 1975, she was at the University of Sussex, becoming Professor of the History of Art in 1989. In 1992, she moved to the University of Manchester to take the Pilkington Professorship in the History of Art, a position she held until 2002. She now works as a free-lance consultant and researcher.
Go to Profile#578
Margaret F. Alexander
#83052
Overall Influence
Margaret Forbes Alexander is a Scottish nurse, educator, researcher and writer. She is emeritus professor at the School of Nursing and Community Health at Glasgow Caledonian University . She began her nursing career as a student nurse at The Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. In 1980, she received a Ph.D. from the University of Edinburgh for her thesis on “Nurse education". She went on to head GCU's Department of Nursing and Community Health until 1996. She was made a Fellow of the Royal College of Nursing in 1992.
Go to Profile#579
Inés Katzenstein
#174484
Overall Influence
1970 - Present (56 years)
Inés Katzenstein is an Argentine curator, art historian, and art critic who specializes in Latin American art. Early life and education Katzenstein was born in Argentina. Katzenstein has a B.A. in communications from the University of Buenos Aires. In 2001, Katzenstein received an M.A. in curatorial studies from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College.
Go to Profile#580
Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie
#168170
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie is a Seminole-Muscogee-Navajo photographer, museum director, curator, and professor. She is living in Davis, California. She serves as the director of the C.N. Gorman Museum and teaches at University of California, Davis.
Go to Profile#581
Hassana Alidou
#120967
Overall Influence
1963 - 2023 (60 years)
Hassana Alidou was a Nigerien diplomat who served as Ambassador to the United States and Canada from 2015 to 2019. She then became the first scholar in residence for the Union Institute and University Institute for Social Justice.
Go to Profile#582
Marjorie Mbilinyi
#179425
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Marjorie Mbiliniyi is a scholar, feminist and gender activist. She was born in New York and studied educational sciences before settling in Dar-es-Salaam and became a citizen of Tanzania after married a Tanzanian. She worked at the Department of Education at Dar-es-Salaam university. Mbiliniyi has dedicate herself to collaborate with and organize women to fight against patriarchy and neo-liberalism in Tanzania and beyond. She worked as a lecturer at the University of Dar es Salaam where she retired in 2003. After her retirement from academia, she served as the Principal Policy Analyst at the...
Go to Profile#583
Su Friedrich
#125361
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Su Friedrich is an American avant-garde film director, producer, writer, and cinematographer. She has been a leading figure in avant-garde filmmaking and a pivotal force in the establishment of Queer Cinema.
Go to Profile#584
Marie Bell
#104884
Overall Influence
1922 - 2012 (90 years)
Marie Bell was a New Zealand educationalist, lecturer and teacher who had a career lasting almost three-quarters of a century. Her career was governed by a child-friendly and progressive outlook that she was exposed to at Wellington Teachers' College. Bell was a supervisor and teacher who introduced a child-led education philosophy to allow children to learn in their own development and interests into New Zealand schools. She also worked for various associations, committees, conferences, commissions and educational boards to further early childhood learning.
Go to Profile#585
Vanessa Green
#170999
Overall Influence
Vanessa Ann Green is a New Zealand educational theorist and academic. She is currently a full professor at the Victoria University of Wellington. Academic career After a 1993 Master's in Education thesis titled 'The effects of non-sexist literature on children's sex-typed toy-play behaviour' and a 1998 PhD titled 'Gender and social competence as predictors of social interaction in a limited resource situation,' both from the Queensland University of Technology, Green worked at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Tasmania before moving to Victoria University of Wellingto...
Go to Profile#586
Jane Torr
#120679
Overall Influence
Jane Torr is an Australian academic in the fields of early childhood language and literacy development in home and early childhood education and care settings. She is an honorary associate in the department of educational studies at Macquarie University, where she has been teaching and researching for over 30 years. Torr's research draws on systemic functional linguistic theory to explore the relationship between context and meaning in adult-child interactions, and the implications for children's learning. She has published over 50 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters, as well as p...
Go to Profile#587
Cécile Fromont
#50310
Overall Influence
Cécile Alice Fromont is a French-born American art historian and educator. Fromont is currently Professor of African and South Atlantic Art at Yale University. Career Born in Martinique, Fromont initially received a degree from Sciences Po in International Relations in 2002. She then continued on to Harvard University to receive degrees in Art History: a Master of Arts in 2004 and a Doctor of Philosophy in 2008. She wrote a doctoral dissertation under Suzanne Blier and Thomas B. F. Cummins titled "Under the Sign of the Cross in the Kingdom of Kongo: Shaping Images and Molding Faith in Early Mo...
Go to Profile#588
Nancy Marie Mithlo
#108598
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Nancy Marie Mithlo is a Chiricahua Apache curator, writer and professor. Her exhibitions have been shown at the Venice Biennale. Mithlo has worked as the chair of American Indian Studies at the Autry National Center Institute and as a professor of gender studies and American Indian Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the author and editor of several books about Native Americans and indigenous art.
Go to Profile#589
Ann J. Lane
#78440
Overall Influence
1931 - 2013 (82 years)
Ann J. Lane was an American educator, historian, and author that was considered to be a pioneer in the fields of women’s history and women’s studies. Before retiring in 2009 she worked at the University of Virginia as a professor of History and director of Women’s Studies.
Go to Profile#590
Patricia Mayayo
#127503
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
Patricia Mayayo Bost is a Spanish art historian, professor, and researcher. Her areas of research and study include the historiography of feminist and queer art, the history of women artists, and contemporary artistic practices.
Go to Profile#591
Peredrij Ganna Romanivna
#179608
Overall Influence
1925 - 2019 (94 years)
Professor Peredrij Ganna Romanivna was a Ukrainian writer, linguist and educator. She wrote more than 100 works, including school textbooks. She became professor Emeritus of Cherkasy National University which emerged from Cherkasy Pedagogical Institute .
Go to Profile#592
Catherine R. Gira
#128780
Overall Influence
1932 - 2019 (87 years)
Catherine Russell Gira was an American educator and administrator who was president of Frostburg State University from 1991 to 2006. Biography Gira was born in Fayette City, Pennsylvania on October 30, 1932. She received a bachelor's degree from California University of Pennsylvania, a master's degree from Johns Hopkins University and a Ph.D. from American University.
Go to Profile#593
Dale Clark Farran
#185274
Overall Influence
Dale Clark Farran is the Antonio and Anita Gotto Chair in Teaching and Learning and Interim Director of the Peabody Research Institute at Vanderbilt University. Her research includes the only randomized control trial of a statewide prekindergarten program.
Go to Profile#594
Sandy Fife Wilson
#152652
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Sandy Fife Wilson is a Muscogee art educator, fashion designer and artist. After graduating from the Institute of American Indian Arts and Northeastern Oklahoma State University, she became an art teacher, first working in the public schools of Dewey, Oklahoma. When Josephine Wapp retired as the textile instructor at the Institute of American Indian Arts, Wilson was hired to teach the design courses. After three years, in 1979, she returned to Oklahoma and taught at Chilocco Indian School until it closed and then worked in the Morris Public School system until her retirement in 2009.
Go to Profile#595
Vilma Mesa
#99953
Overall Influence
1963 - Present (63 years)
Vilma María Mesa Narváez is a Colombian-American mathematics educator whose research topics have included secondary-school curriculum development, college-level calculus instruction, mathematics in community colleges, international perspectives in mathematics education, and inquiry-based learning. She is a professor of education and mathematics at the University of Michigan, where she is affiliated with the Center for the Study of Higher and Post-secondary Education.
Go to Profile#596
Amy Meyers
#82079
Overall Influence
Amy R. Weinstein Meyers is an American art historian. Meyers is the former Director of the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven and Chief Executive Officer of the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art in London.
Go to Profile#597
Saundra McGuire
#169136
Overall Influence
Saundra Yancy McGuire is the Director Emerita of the Center for Academic Success and a retired professor of chemistry at Louisiana State University. She is best known for her work on science education, having written several papers and books on the subject. Her interests focus on improving student learning by involving faculty in metacognitive learning strategies.
Go to Profile#598
Madeline H. Caviness
#152185
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Madeline Harrison Caviness, FMAoA, FSA is a British-American scholar of European medieval art, and an expert on glass painting and medieval women as viewers of art. She is a Professor Emeritus at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts.
Go to Profile#599
Moira Roth
#94511
Overall Influence
1933 - 2021 (88 years)
Moira Roth was a feminist art historian and art critic who was Trefethen Professor of Art History at Mills College in Oakland, California from 1985 to 2017. She taught at the University of California, San Diego from 1974 to 1985. She was educated at the London School of Economics in England, and received a B.A. in sociology and an M.A. from New York University and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 1974. She wrote extensively on contemporary art, editing The Amazing Decade: Women and Performance Art in America 1970-1980, A Source Book, published by Astro Artz . Her collection...
Go to Profile#600
Madeleine Gagnon
#30300
Overall Influence
1938 - Present (88 years)
Madeleine Gagnon is a Quebec educator, literary critic and writer. Biography She was born in Amqui in the valley of the Matapedia River and was educated at the Collège Notre-Dame d'Acadie in Moncton, at the Université de Montréal and the Université d'Aix-en-Provence. From 1969 to 1982, she taught literature at the Université du Québec à Montréal. She later served as a visiting professor and writer-in-residence at the Université de Montréal, at the Université de Sherbrooke, at the Université du Québec à Montréal and at the Université du Québec à Rimouski.
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