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,
#751
Barbara L. Craig
#181369
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Barbara L. Craig is an archivist, archival educator and scholar. She has contributed to the scholarly literature of archival theory and professional practice in the areas of appraisal, the ethnographic study of practicing archivists and users of archives, and the history of archives in her study of the impact of technology on the record-keeping practices of the British Civil Service before 1960. She has an MA in history from McMaster University, a certificate in Principles and Administration of Archives from Library and Archives Canada, and a Certificate in Records Management from the Government of Ontario.
Go to Profile#752
Judith E. Stein
#117294
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Judith E. Stein is a Philadelphia-based art historian and curator, whose academic career has focused on the postwar New York art world. She has written a biography of the art dealer Richard Bellamy, as well as feature articles regarding artists including Jo Baer, Red Grooms, Lester Johnson, Alfred Leslie and Jay Milder.
Go to Profile#753
Saori Hayami
#159514
Overall Influence
1991 - Present (35 years)
is a Japanese voice actress and singer affiliated with I'm Enterprise. As a singer, she is signed to Warner Bros. Home Entertainment. Hayami won the 10th Seiyu Awards for Best Supporting Actress. Her most notable roles include Miyuki Shiba in The Irregular at Magic High School, Yukino Yukinoshita in My Youth Romantic Comedy Is Wrong, As I Expected, Leona in Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai, Himawari Uzumaki in Boruto: Naruto Next Generations, Shinobu Kochō in Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, Ryuu Lion in Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?, Yor Forger in Spy × Family, Yamato in ...
Go to Profile#754
Ellen Gates D'Oench
#179973
Overall Influence
1930 - 2009 (79 years)
Ellen Gates D'Oench , known as "Puffin", was Curator Emerita of the Davison Art Center at Wesleyan University, Connecticut. A Wesleyan graduate magna cum laude, she curated the Davison Art Center from 1979 until 1998.
Go to Profile#755
Barbara Elefant-Raiskin
#185094
Overall Influence
1930 - 2013 (83 years)
Barbara Elefant-Raiskin was a Jewish American-Israeli educator, university lecturer, poet, painter, author of children's literature and textbooks. Early life Elefant-Raiskin was born in Mukachevo, then in Czechoslovakia, to Joseph-Meir and Sarah Elefant. Her father was an Orthodox Rabbi and teacher. In 1936 her family moved to Ada, Serbia. While staying there they became stateless, since the part of Czechoslovakia they had lived in had been taken over by Nazi allied Hungary. The family managed to emigrate to the U.S. in 1939, just before the outbreak of World War II. On the way to the U.S. th...
Go to Profile#756
Chick Strand
#146534
Overall Influence
1931 - 2009 (78 years)
Mildred "Chick" Strand was an American experimental filmmaker, "a pioneer in blending avant-garde techniques with documentary". Chick Strand contributed to the movement of women's experimental cinema in the early 1960s1970's. Strand's film making and directing approach incorporates personal elements from her own life experiences and societal forces and realities. The film Elasticity is an example of Strand's attempts at autobiographical work that also incorporates Strand's specific standpoint on certain social issues. Feminist issues and anthropological inquiries about the human condition are frequent themes in Strand's films.
Go to Profile#757
Cloé Madanes
#10090
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Cloé Madanes is a teacher in family therapy and brief therapy. She has teamed up with Tony Robbins since 2002 to train strategic interventionists for finding solutions to interpersonal conflicts, preventing violence, and contributing to the creation of a more cohesive and civil community.
Go to Profile#758
Carol Herselle Krinsky
#59820
Overall Influence
1937 - Present (89 years)
Carol Herselle Krinsky is an American architectural historian. She graduated from Erasmus Hall High School, studied at Smith College and New York University, . Krinsky is a professor of twentieth-century architectural history at New York University and a former President of the Society of Architectural Historians.
Go to Profile#759
Margaret Cool Root
#93561
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Margaret Cool Root is Professor of Near Eastern Art and Archaeology at the University of Michigan. She is an expert on the Achaemenid empire of ancient Persia and its interactions with Greece, and has published widely on Near Eastern material culture.
Go to Profile#760
Maaya Sakamoto
#128571
Overall Influence
1980 - Present (46 years)
is a Japanese actress and singer. She made her debut as a voice actress in 1992 as the voice of Chifuru in the anime Little Twins, and became known as the voice of Hitomi Kanzaki in The Vision of Escaflowne. Other major roles in anime include Leila Malcal in Code Geass: Akito the Exiled, Jeanne d'Arc in Fate/Apocrypha, Shiki Ryōgi in The Garden of Sinners, Eto in Tokyo Ghoul, Riho Yamazaki in Nightwalker: The Midnight Detective, Moe Katsuragi in Risky Safety, Princess Tomoyo in Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicle, Haruhi Fujioka in Ouran High School Host Club, Sayaka Nakasugi in Birdy the Mighty, Cie...
Go to Profile#761
Christy Anderson
#107915
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Christy Anderson is an architectural historian with a special interest in the buildings of the Renaissance and Baroque. She is currently a professor of Art and Architecture at University of Toronto. She graduated from Johns Hopkins University with a B.A., from University of Massachusetts Amherst with an M.A. in the History of Art, and from Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a PhD from the School of Architecture in the History, Theory and Criticism of Art, Architecture and Urbanism Program. She taught at Yale University from 1995 until 2004. She has lectured at the Courtauld Institute...
Go to Profile#762
Alma Jadallah
#186057
Overall Influence
Alma Abdul-Hadi Jadallah, is a social scientist, internationally recognized mediator, facilitator and trainer, as well as a scholar-practitioner and educator with close to twenty years of experience in the field of conflict analysis and resolution, research and applied practice, peacebuilding, conflict prevention, and transformation. Since 2005, she has been the President and Managing Director of Kommon Denominator Inc., a private consulting firm.
Go to Profile#763
Penny Cousineau-Levine
#184803
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Penny Cousineau-Levine is a Canadian photography theorist, curator, artist and professor. Life Cousineau-Levine was born in Fredericton, New Brunswick. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in English literature from the University of Manitoba and a Master of Fine Arts from the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, New York.
Go to Profile#764
Phoebe Farris
#186204
Overall Influence
1952 - Present (74 years)
Phoebe Farris is an art therapist, author, editor, artist, academic, photographer, free lance arts critic, and curator. Farris received Fulbright and National Endowment of the Humanities grants and was named a Rockefeller Scholar in Residence. She was a resident at Harvard University’s Institute on the Arts and Civic Dialogue and at the Women’s Leadership Institute at Mills College, she earned an international reputation in the field of women’s studies. She identifies as a Powhatan-Renape/Pamunkey Native American. She taught at Purdue University for 22 years, and is now a professor emerita....
Go to Profile#765
Rebecca Hankins
#144899
Overall Influence
Rebecca L. Hankins is the Africana Resources Librarian/Curator at Texas A&M University, whose research interests include women's and gender studies, Middle Eastern studies, the African diaspora, and Islam in science fiction and popular culture.
Go to Profile#766
Alexis Krasilovsky
#156200
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Alexis Krasilovsky is an American filmmaker, writer and professor. Krasilovsky's first film, End of the Art World documented artists including Andy Warhol and Robert Rauschenberg. Krasilovsky moved from New York to Los Angeles in the 1970s to pursue her passion for filmmaking, writing and directing films through her company, Rafael Film. She is the writer and director of the global documentary features, Women Behind the Camera and Let Them Eat Cake.
Go to Profile#767
Antje von Graevenitz
#153484
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Antje von Graevenitz, born Ludwig is a German art historian, art critic, educator and author. Education and career Since 1970, Antje von Graevenitz has lived in Amsterdam. As a professor of general art history, specialized in the history of 20th- and 21st-century art, she taught at the University of Amsterdam and Cologne . In her research she is mainly focused on ephemeral art and interdisciplinary and anthropological topics . Some of her publications are dedicated to Marcel Duchamp, Joseph Beuys and Nam June Paik. Parallel to studying librarianship , she read art history, archeology and e...
Go to Profile#768
Christine Ross
#162769
Overall Influence
Christine Ross is a Canadian scholar specializing on contemporary media arts, in particular: the relationship between media, aesthetics and subjectivity; visuality; spectatorship and interactivity studies; augmented reality; and reconfigurations of time and temporality in recent media arts.
Go to Profile#769
Susan Best
#140698
Overall Influence
Susan Best is an art historian with expertise in critical theory and modern and contemporary art. Best is a professor at the Queensland College of Art, Griffith University. Her book, Visualizing Feeling: Affect and the Feminine Avant-garde focuses on four artists of the 1960s and 70s: Eva Hesse, Lygia Clark, Ana Mendieta and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. It shows how their work transforms the avant-garde protocols of the period by introducing an affective dimension to late modern art. According to Suzannah Biernoff Visualizing Feeling: Affect and the Feminine Avant-garde "should be compulsory readin...
Go to Profile#770
Rachel Scherr
#190927
Overall Influence
Rachel E. Scherr is an American physics educator, currently an assistant professor of physics at the University of Washington Bothell. Her research includes studies of responsive teaching and active learning, video and gestural analysis of classroom behavior, and student understanding of energy and special relativity.
Go to Profile#771
Barbara Barletta
#131947
Overall Influence
1952 - 2015 (63 years)
Barbara A. Barletta was a prominent American Classical archaeologist and architectural historian. Barletta earned a B.A. in Art History at the University of California Santa Barbara and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology at Bryn Mawr College. From the American Academy in Rome Barletta received the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship in Classical Studies in 1990. She received a series of awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, including an award to support research on the Temple of Athena at Suonion in 2009.
Go to Profile#772
Rebecca Zorach
#171818
Overall Influence
1969 - Present (57 years)
Rebecca Zorach is an art historian and Mary Jane Crowe Professor in Art and Art History at Northwestern University. Her work focuses on early modern European art, contemporary and activist art. Zorach earned her PhD from the University of Chicago in 1999.
Go to Profile#773
Véronique Schiltz
#114211
Overall Influence
1942 - 2019 (77 years)
Véronique Schiltz was a French archaeologist, historian of art, and literary translator. She was a specialist in steppes art, in particular that of the Scythians, concentrating on the history and culture of steppe peoples between the first millennium BCE and the first millennium CE. She was a member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres from 2011, and an Officer of the Legion of Honour.
Go to Profile#774
Erla Bergendahl Hohler
#178044
Overall Influence
1937 - 2019 (82 years)
Erla Karine Bergendahl Hohler was a Norwegian archaeologist, museum curator, and art historian. Career Hohler graduated from the University of Oslo before attending the Courtauld Institute in London. In 1975 she was assistant professor at the Institute of Art History at the University of Oslo. In 1987 she became Keeper of the Medieval Department at the University Museum of National Antiquities. In 1993 she became Professor of the Department of Archaeology, Art History and Numismatics before, in 1994, moving to the University of Tromsø as Professor of Art History.
Go to Profile#775
Samantha Womack
#170836
Overall Influence
1972 - Present (54 years)
Samantha Zoe Womack is an English actress, singer, model and director who has worked in film, television and stage. Womack initially planned a career in singing and she represented the United Kingdom in the 1991 Eurovision Song Contest. Her song for the contest, "A Message to Your Heart", was released as her first single in April 1991 and reached number 30 in the UK Singles Chart.
Go to Profile#776
Melanie La Rosa
#189618
Overall Influence
Melanie La Rosa is an American filmmaker and is currently a professor at Pace University in New York City. Her cinematic work has primarily opted for a documentarian approach that promotes social activism. Many of her films have been met with critical acclaim and applause at human rights festivals and organizations. La Rosa is currently working on her third feature-length documentary entitled Greenbreakers: How to Power a City. Her two previous films depict LGBT and women's rights issues in lieu of the misrepresentation of these figures.
Go to Profile#777
Virginia Walcott Beauchamp
#160290
Overall Influence
1920 - 2019 (99 years)
Virginia Walcott Beauchamp was an American educator and writer who was the founding coordinator of the Women's studies program at the University of Maryland, College Park. Walcott was born in Sparta, Michigan, the daughter of two teachers. She earned a B.A. in English at the University of Michigan in 1942, and after serving with the Red Cross during World War II, she returned to Michigan to complete an M.A. in 1948. She received a Ph.D. in English from the University of Chicago in 1955.
Go to Profile#778
Rosa Bruno-Jofré
#122913
Overall Influence
1946 - Present (80 years)
Rosa del Carmen Bruno-Jofré is a historian. She is a professor and former Dean of Education at Queen's University. In 2019, Bruno-Jofré was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Career Bruno-Jofré moved to Canada in 1977. After earning her PhD from the University of Calgary, she accepted academic positions with Western Washington University and the University of Manitoba. After serving three years at the University of Manitoba as an Associate Dean of Education, she joined the faculty of Queen's University as the Dean of Education. She spent 10 years in this role before being replaced.
Go to Profile#779
Kotono Mitsuishi
#139154
Overall Influence
1967 - Present (59 years)
is a Japanese actress and narrator. She was affiliated with Arts Vision and Lasley Arrow, but is now freelance. Mitsuishi lived in Nagareyama, Chiba. She graduated from high school and entered the Katsuta Voice Actor's Academy in 1986. She is well known for her roles as Usagi Tsukino in Sailor Moon series, Misato Katsuragi in Neon Genesis Evangelion, Sayaka Mine in Yaiba, Boa Hancock in One Piece, Murrue Ramius, Haro and Narrator in Mobile Suit Gundam SEED and Mobile Suit Gundam SEED DESTINY, and Rena Mizunashi in Detective Conan.
Go to Profile#780
Mary Sue Coleman
#188481
Overall Influence
1943 - Present (83 years)
Mary Sue Wilson Coleman is an American chemist and academic administrator who served as the 13th president of the University of Michigan from 2002 to 2014, interim president of the University of Michigan in 2022, and the 18th president of the University of Iowa from 1995 to 2002.
Go to Profile#781
Dorothy Habel
#173343
Overall Influence
1950 - Present (76 years)
Dorothy Metzger Habel is an American historian of Ancient Roman art, currently a Distinguished Professor at the University of Tennessee.
Go to Profile#782
Aya Hirano
#127875
Overall Influence
1987 - Present (39 years)
is a Japanese actress and singer. Beginning in the entertainment industry as a child actor in television commercials, she appeared in her first voice acting role in the anime television series Angel Tales .
Go to Profile#783
Haruka Tomatsu
#169399
Overall Influence
1990 - Present (36 years)
is a Japanese actress and singer, employed by Music Ray'n. She received the Rookie of the Year award at the 3rd Seiyu Awards and the Synergy Award at the 9th Seiyu Awards. Tomatsu voiced Asuna Yuuki in Sword Art Online, Zero Two in Darling in the Franxx, Lala Satalin Deviluke in To LOVE-Ru, Kyoko Hori in Horimiya, Morgiana in Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic and Naruko "Anaru" Anjo in Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day.
Go to Profile#784
Lore Segal
#40549
Overall Influence
1928 - Present (98 years)
Lore Segal , née Lore Groszmann, is an American novelist, translator, teacher, short story writer, and author of children's books. Her novel Shakespeare's Kitchen was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2008.
Go to Profile#785
Mildred Leigh
#189208
Overall Influence
1902 - 1997 (95 years)
Mildred Leigh was a teacher and administrator from Illinois who gained most of her renown at Montana State College in Bozeman, Montana, as the director of Hamilton Hall and the Student Union. She was active in the Bozeman community. She received an honorary doctorate from MSU, and the Leigh Lounge in the Student Union Building was dedicated to her.
Go to Profile#786
Olga Raggio
#36604
Overall Influence
1925 - 2009 (84 years)
Olga Raggio was an art historian and curator who worked with the Metropolitan Museum of Art for over 60 years, and discovered the 'lost' bust of Cosimo I de' Medici by Bartolommeo Bandinelli. Early life Olga Raggio was born in Rome on 5 February 1926. Her father was Italian, while her mother was Russian.
Go to Profile#787
Willemijn Fock
#179325
Overall Influence
1942 - 2021 (79 years)
Cornelia Wilhelmina "Willemijn" Fock was a Dutch art historian. She was professor of the history of applied arts at Leiden University. Career Fock obtained her doctorate at Leiden University in 1975 with a dissertation on the goldsmith Jacques Bylivelt at the court of Florence. In 1982, she became a professor of the history of applied arts at the same university. She was mainly concerned with the history of interior decoration and furniture, tapestries and goldsmithing. She wrote books about residential culture and Rapenburg in Leiden. Fock retired in 2007. In 2019, she was awarded an honorar...
Go to Profile#788
Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharov
#182270
Overall Influence
1940 - Present (86 years)
Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharov is an art historian at the University of Toronto at Mississauga and authority on the art of Vincent van Gogh. Her book Van Gogh: The Lost Arles Sketchbook, contains reproductions of sketches said to be by the artist, but the authenticity of which has been disputed.
Go to Profile#789
Carlin Glynn
#182191
Overall Influence
1940 - 2023 (83 years)
Carlin Elizabeth Glynn was an American singer and actress. Most notable for her work as a theater performer, she is best known for her Tony Award-winning performance, as Mona Stangley, in the original 1978 production of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. She is also known for her roles in John Hughes' Sixteen Candles and Peter Masterson's The Trip to Bountiful , which is based on the play if the same name, by Horton Foote. Glynn was the mother of actress Mary Stuart Masterson.
Go to Profile#790
Jane Hawkes
#155304
Overall Influence
Jane Hawkes is a British art historian. She is a Professor of History of Art at the University of York specialising in the art and sculpture of the Anglo-Saxon period. Career Hawkes completed her PhD funded by a British Academy scholarship on the "Iconography of Anglo-Saxon sculpture of the pre-Viking period in the North of England". She subsequently worked on a 2-year post-Doctoral fellowship at the University of Newcastle. She has taught at the Universities of Newcastle, Edinburgh, and the National University of Ireland at University College Cork. She is one of the co-investigators of the C...
Go to Profile#791
Soe Tjen Marching
#173266
Overall Influence
1971 - Present (55 years)
Soe Tjen Marching is a writer, academician, activist, and a composer of avant-garde music from Indonesia. In 1998, she won the national competition for Indonesian Contemporary Composers held by the German Embassy. Her compositions have been played in New Zealand, Indonesia and Japan. Her work has been released on the CD Asia Piano Avantgarde - Indonesia, played by pianist Steffen Schleiermacher. In 2010, her work has been selected as one of the two best compositions in the International Competition for avant-garde composers held in Singapore. In her musical career, she has been mainly an auto...
Go to Profile#792
Leigh Carriage
#191248
Overall Influence
Leigh Carriage is an Australian vocalist, educator and songwriter. Her festival performances include the Monterey Jazz Festival, Wangaratta Jazz and Blues Festival, Melbourne Women’s Jazz Festival, Brisbane International Jazz Festival and the Brisbane Festival. Carriage's 2013 album Mandarin Skyline, mixed and mastered by Grammy Award winner Helik Hadir, was nominated for a National Australian Jazz Bell Award, and Weave won NCEIA Album of the Year.
Go to Profile#793
Charlotte Townsend-Gault
#176992
Overall Influence
Charlotte Townsend-Gault is an art historian, professor emeritus, author, and curator. Townsend-Gault’s research, teaching and scholarship concerns contemporary visual and material Native American and First Nations cultures, particularly those of the Pacific Northwest.
Go to Profile#794
Frances Negrón-Muntaner
#187547
Overall Influence
1966 - Present (60 years)
Frances Negrón-Muntaner is a Puerto Rican filmmaker, writer, and scholar. Her work is focused on a comparative exploration of coloniality, primarily in Puerto Rico and the United States, with special attention given to the intersections between race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and politics. She is an associate professor of English and Comparative Literature and Director of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race at Columbia University in New York City. She has also contributed to the Huffington Post, El Diario/La Prensa, and 80 Grados, and since 2008 has served as a Global Expert for the United Nations Rapid Response Media Mechanism.
Go to Profile#795
Abigail Child
#145483
Overall Influence
1948 - Present (78 years)
Abigail Child is a filmmaker, poet, and writer who has been active in experimental writing and media since the 1970s. She has completed more than thirty film and video works and installations, and six books. Child's early film work addressed the interplay between sound and image through reshaping narrative tropes, prefiguring many concerns of contemporary film and media.
Go to Profile#796
Z. S. Strother
#170776
Overall Influence
Zoë S. Strother is an art historian. She serves as Riggio Professor of African Art at Columbia University. Her work focuses on 20th and 21st-century Central and West African art history. She graduated from Yale University.
Go to Profile#797
Maria Gough
#101385
Overall Influence
1961 - Present (65 years)
Maria Elizabeth Gough is an art historian and actor. She serves as Joseph Pulitzer, Jr. Professor of Modern Art at Harvard University. Her research focuses on early twentieth-century European art, particularly the Russian avant-gardes, Weimar, and French modernism.
Go to Profile#798
Leoni Schmidt
#190867
Overall Influence
Leoni Schmidt is a South African-born New Zealand art historian and full professor in and previous Head of the Dunedin School of Art and Director of Research and Postgraduate Studies at the Otago Polytechnic and Deputy Chief Executive at Otago Polytechnic Auckland International Campus in New Zealand.
Go to Profile#799
Elizabeth Simpson
#128148
Overall Influence
1947 - Present (79 years)
Elizabeth Simpson is an archaeologist, art historian, illustrator, and professor emerita at the Bard Graduate Center, New York, NY, where she taught for 25 years. She is director of the project to study, conserve, and publish the large collection of rare wooden artifacts from Gordion, Turkey, which date to the eighth century BC. In this capacity, she is a consulting scholar in the Mediterranean Section, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia. She received her PhD in classical archaeology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1985.
Go to Profile#800
Annie Silverstein
#189753
Overall Influence
Annie Silverstein is an American film director and screenwriter. Early life Annie was born and raised in Oakland, California. She graduated from Macalester College. with a BA in American History, and in 2013 received an MFA in Film Production from the University of Texas at Austin.
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