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,
#851
Krista Kodres
#122231
Overall Influence
1957 - Present (69 years)
Krista Kodres is an Estonian art historian and former backstroke and freestyle swimmer. From 1971 until 1974, she become 7-times Estonian champion in different swimming disciplines and was a member of Estonian swimming team. She has set 13 national records.
Go to Profile#852
Anne-Catherine Robert-Hauglustaine
#183522
Overall Influence
1953 - Present (73 years)
Anne-Catherine Robert is a Belgian museum professional and lecturer at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne who also served as Director General of the International Council of Museums , from May 2014 through November 2016.
Go to Profile#853
Noushafarin Ansari
#43564
Overall Influence
1939 - Present (87 years)
Noushafarin Ansari is an Iranian librarian, educator, and manager. Life Her parents were diplomats; therefore she was exposed to many languages and cultures in Asia and Europe. In 1958-1960 she studied librarianship in Geneva, a discipline she continued at McGill University and at the University of Toronto. She worked as a librarian at the Delhi Public Library, and Tehran University Central library, and was Library Director at the Faculty of Literature and Humanities at Tehran University. In 1962 she married Mehdi Mohaghegh, a renowned Iranian university professor and scholar.
Go to Profile#854
Ewa Chojecka
#173184
Overall Influence
1933 - Present (93 years)
Ewa Sabine Chojecka is a Polish art historian who served as chair of art history at the University of Silesia in Katowice from 1977 to 2003, and chairwoman of the Silesian Museum and the Bielsko-Biała Museum and Castle. She was awarded a Georg Dehio Cultural Prize in 2013, and invested with the Order of Polonia Restituta in 1989.
Go to Profile#855
Joanne Cuthbertson
#192318
Overall Influence
Joanne Cuthbertson was the chancellor of the University of Calgary in Alberta from 2006 until 2010.
Go to Profile#856
Helen Doron
#182312
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Helen Doron is a British-Israeli linguist and educator based in Israel. She is best known as the creator of the Helen Doron Method of teaching and as the Founder of Helen Doron Educational Group, an international pedagogic network for babies, children, and teens learning English and other programs, including Helen Doron Academy Kindergartens, Helen Doron International, MathRiders and Helen Doron Connect.
Go to Profile#857
Debora L. Silverman
#116418
Overall Influence
1954 - Present (72 years)
Debora Leah Silverman is professor and University of California Presidential Chair in Modern European History, Art and Culture at the University of California, Los Angeles. She received her PhD from Princeton University in 1983. She is a specialist in the history of Art Nouveau. She was a Guggenheim fellow in 1992 in fine arts research.
Go to Profile#858
Bette Gordon
#172826
Overall Influence
1955 - Present (71 years)
Bette Gordon is an American filmmaker and professor at Columbia University School of the Arts. She is best known for her films Variety and Handsome Harry both of which received critical acclaim in North America and abroad.
Go to Profile#859
Anna Kortelainen
#87361
Overall Influence
1968 - Present (58 years)
Anna Taina Aleksandra Kortelainen is a Finnish scholar, art historian and non-fiction writer. Life Kortelainen defended her doctoral dissertation in 2002 at the University of Turku about Albert Edelfelt. She teaches art history at the University of Helsinki.
Go to Profile#860
Charlotte Eyerman
#175129
Overall Influence
2000 - Present (26 years)
Charlotte Nalle Eyerman is an American museum director and curator and expert in 19th century French art. She was appointed Director and Chief Curator of the JPMorgan Chase art collection in 2017. She is a member of the board of trustees at Accountability Lab. Eyerman has also served as Director and chief executive officer of the Monterey Museum of Art , and as Director of the Gagosian Gallery, Beverly Hills.
Go to Profile#861
Laura Malosetti Costa
#164490
Overall Influence
1956 - Present (70 years)
Laura Malosetti Costa is a Uruguayan-born Argentine social and cultural anthropologist, researcher, art historian, and essayist. She is also a curator of art exhibitions and the author of several books on Latin American art. She was recognized with the Konex Award in 2006 and 2016.
Go to Profile#862
Dominga Sotomayor Castillo
#191040
Overall Influence
1985 - Present (41 years)
Dominga Sotomayor Castillo is a Chilean filmmaker. Biography She graduated from Universidad Católica de Chile with a degree on Audiovisual Direction in 2007, followed by a Master at the Escola de Cinema y Audiovisuals de Catalunya in Film direction. She directed several short films that were shown at festivals internationally. Her first feature film, Thursday Till Sunday was developed as part of the program La Résidence by Cinéfondation / Festival de Cannes, and premiered at International Film Festival Rotterdam, where it was awarded the Hivos Tiger Award.
Go to Profile#863
Elizabeth Bass
1876 - 1956 (80 years)
Mary Elizabeth Bass was an American physician, educator and suffragist. She was the first of two women to become faculty members at the medical school of Tulane University along with Edith Ballard. Bass worked to promote the efforts of women as physicians. She worked at Tulane for thirty years.
Go to Profile#864
May Gorslin Preston Slosson
1858 - 1943 (85 years)
May Gorslin Preston Slosson was an American educator and suffragist. She was the first woman to obtain a doctoral degree in Philosophy in the United States. Life May Gorslin Preston was the daughter of Reverend Levi Campbell Preston and the former Mary Gorslin. Her family moved to Kansas from New York State. She earned Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees from Hillsdale College in Michigan. In 1880 she became the first woman to earn a Ph.D. from Cornell University, and the first woman to obtain a doctoral degree in Philosophy in the United States. Her thesis was entitled Different Theories of Beauty.
Go to Profile#865
Yoshi Kajiro
1871 - 1959 (88 years)
Yoshi Kajiro was a Japanese educator, the longtime principal of the in Okayama. Early life Yoshi Kajiro was born in Matsuyama, in Ehime Prefecture, the daughter of Kajiro Tomoyoshi , a Christian convert who later established a Japanese church in the Kakaako district of Honolulu. She was educated at Baika Girls' School, which was founded by Japanese Christians.
Go to Profile#866
Laura Drake Gill
1860 - 1926 (66 years)
Laura Drake Gill was the third dean of Barnard College. She graduated in 1881 from Smith College with a degree in mathematics. She became an educator, in particular the third dean of Barnard College. In 1898, she left for Cuba among the first group of nurses sent by the Red Cross. According to Britannica, she is "remembered particularly for her role in establishing organized placement assistance for educated women".
Go to Profile#867
Lois Knowles
1903 - 1990 (87 years)
Lois Knowles was the first woman to become a full professor in the College of Education at the University of Missouri. Dr. Knowles advocated for more women in higher education and co-authored an innovative textbook at the time, Seeing Through Arithmetic.
Go to Profile#868
Ninetta May Runnals
1885 - 1980 (95 years)
Ninetta May "Nettie" Runnals was an American academic and college administrator. She served as Dean of Women at Colby College in Waterville, Maine, her alma mater, for 27 years, advocating for gender equality for women students and faculty members. She also helped raise significant funding for a Women's Union on the Mayflower Hill campus, which was renamed Runnals Union in her honor in 1959. She was inducted into the Maine Women's Hall of Fame in 1992.
Go to Profile#869
Mary Julia Baldwin
1829 - 1897 (68 years)
Mary Julia Baldwin was an American educator in Staunton, Virginia. For thirty-four years she ran Mary Baldwin College, which was named in her honor in 1895 and later became Mary Baldwin University. Early and family life Born to Margaret Sarah Sowers Baldwin Heiskell and her husband William Daniel Baldwin in Winchester, Virginia at the northern end of the Shenandoah Valley on October 4, 1829, Mary Julia Baldwin never knew her father, who died when she was a baby. Raised by her maternal grandparents in Staunton, Virginia after her mother remarried, in 1842 Mary became a member of the first class of sixty girls at the Augusta Female Seminary.
Go to Profile#870
Helen M. Robinson
1906 - 1988 (82 years)
Helen M. Robinson was an American writer and educator who became the lead writer of the Dick and Jane series of readers after the death of William S. Gray in 1960, a status she retained through the late 1970s. She was a professor at the University of Chicago from 1944 to 1968, and was nationally recognized in the field of reading education. She served as first President of the Reading Hall of Fame.
Go to Profile#871
Electa Nobles Lincoln Walton
1824 - 1908 (84 years)
Electa Nobles Lincoln Walton was an American educator, lecturer, writer, and suffragist from the U.S. state of New York. Though she was co-author of a series of arithmetic books, the publishers decided that her name should be withheld. She became an advocate for the enfranchisement of women. She was said to be the "first woman to administer a state normal school". She was an officer of the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association, an active member and director in the New England Women's Educational Club of Boston, and president of the West Newton Woman's Educational Club since its organization in 1880.
Go to Profile#872
Julia Gulliver
1856 - 1940 (84 years)
Julia Henrietta Gulliver was an American philosopher, educator and college president. She was only the second woman in America to receive a Ph.D. in philosophy and was a tireless advocate for increased female representation in higher education.
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Lucy Rider Meyer
1849 - 1922 (73 years)
Lucy Jane Rider Meyer was an American social worker, educator, physician, and author who cofounded the Chicago Training School for City, Home, and Foreign Missions in Illinois. She is credited with reviving the office of the female deacon in the U.S. Methodist Episcopal Church.
Go to Profile#874
Millicent Carey McIntosh
1898 - 2001 (103 years)
Millicent Carey McIntosh was an educational administrator and American feminist who led the Brearley School , and most prominently Barnard College . The first married woman to head one of the Seven Sisters, she was "considered a national role model for generations of young women who wanted to combine career and family," advocating for working mothers and for child care as a dignified profession.
Go to Profile#875
Annie Webb Blanton
1870 - 1945 (75 years)
Annie Webb Blanton was an American suffragist from Texas, educator, and author of a series of grammar textbooks. Blanton was elected Superintendent of Texas Public Instruction in 1918, making her the first woman in Texas elected to statewide office.
Go to Profile#876
Moina Michael
1869 - 1944 (75 years)
Moina Belle Michael was an American professor and humanitarian who conceived the idea of using poppies as a symbol of remembrance for those who served in World War I. Early life Michael was born in 1869 and lived on what is now known as 3698 Moina Michael Road in Good Hope, in Walton County, Georgia. She was the eldest daughter and second of the seven children of John Marion Michael, a Confederate veteran of the American Civil War, and Alice Sherwood Wise. She was distantly related to General Francis Marion on her father's side, and the Wise family of Virginia state governors on her mother's side.
Go to Profile#877
Helen Stuart Campbell
1839 - 1918 (79 years)
Helen Stuart Campbell was an American author, economist, and editor, as well as a social and industrial reformer. She was a pioneer in the field of home economics. Her Household Economics was an early textbook in the field of domestic science.
Go to Profile#878
Frances St John Chappelle
1897 - 1936 (39 years)
Frances Arcadia Willoughby St. John Chappelle was an Assistant in Psychology at the University of Nevada. Biography Frances Arcadia Willoughby St. John was born on July 2, 1897, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the daughter of Lettie Willoughby St. John, a direct descendant of the first Lord Willoughby and one of the first women to graduate from a medical college. She was also an artist and magazine illustrator.
Go to Profile#879
May L. Cheney
1862 - 1942 (80 years)
May Lucretia Shepard Cheney was born during the American Civil War in Garden Grove, Iowa, and was named after the month in which she was born, and her maternal grandmother who influenced her childhood. May's early school attendance was in her hometown. She attended high schools in Oakland and Chico, California before enrolling at UCB in 1879. With her widowed mother, she settled at 2020 Hearst Avenue , in a house with a watermill in the rear yard. Residing in the same house was Lemuel Warren Cheney , a law student.
Go to Profile#880
Chloe Clark Willson
1818 - 1874 (56 years)
Chloe Aurelia Clark Willson was an early pioneer of what became the U.S. state of Oregon, and one of the first teachers of the Methodist mission in the Willamette Valley. In 1850, she owned half of the land in Oregon's state capital Salem.
Go to Profile#881
Abby Lillian Marlatt
1869 - 1943 (74 years)
Abby Lillian Marlatt was an American educator. Born in Manhattan, Kansas, Marlatt graduated from Kansas State College with a B.S. in 1888. receiving her M.S. from the same institution in 1890. After graduation, she taught home economics, beginning in Utah before going to Rhode Island. In 1909, she came to the University of Wisconsin, where she became the first director of the home economics department. She remained in this capacity until retiring, in 1939, with the title of professor emeritus. She established a regular curriculum and provided students with more specialized work; besides e...
Go to Profile#882
Alberta Virginia Scott
1878 - 1902 (24 years)
Alberta Virginia Scott was an American educator. She was the first African-American graduate of Radcliffe College, in 1898. Early life Alberta Virginia Scott was born near Richmond, Virginia. Her mother worked as a cook. She raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where her family moved when she was six years old. Her family were members of the historic Union Baptist Church in Cambridge. Scott attended Allston School and then Cambridge Latin School, graduating with the class of 1894.
Go to Profile#883
Althea Sherman
1853 - 1943 (90 years)
Althea Rosina Sherman was an American illustrator, educator, self-taught ornithologist, and writer who commissioned the building of the "Chimney Swifts' Tower" in Clayton County, Iowa. This structure enabled her to observe and report on the life cycle of chimney swifts, the first to complete such investigations. She published more than 70 articles in scientific and ornithological journals during her career. Sherman was elected as a member of the American Ornithologists' Union and was listed in the third edition of American Men of Science. Additionally, her work as an illustrator, particularly...
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Mable E. Buland Campbell
1885 - 1961 (76 years)
Mable Electa Buland Campbell was a Professor of English in Washington State during the early 20th century, and was, at one time, the youngest person to hold a PH.D. in the United States. Buland was also active in women's groups associated with women's suffrage.
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Petronėlė Lastienė
1897 - 1981 (84 years)
Petronėlė Lastienė Sirutytė was a Lithuanian teacher and university professor. She was recognized as one of the Righteous Among the Nations for rescuing Jewish children from the Kaunas Ghetto during the Holocaust.
Go to Profile#886
Elisabeth Neurdenburg
1882 - 1957 (75 years)
Elisabeth Neurdenburg was a Dutch art historian. She contributed to the large inventory of 17th-century Dutch paintings by Cornelis Hofstede de Groot, and became a specialist on Dutch Kraak ware. She was a close friend of the Dutch art historian and museum director Ida Caroline Eugenie Peelen.
Go to Profile#887
Rachel Elfreda Fowler
1872 - 1951 (79 years)
Rachel Elfreda Fowler was an English literary scholar and lecturer in art and history at the University of Oxford. Early life Rachel Fowler was born in London on 10 December 1872, the youngest daughter of Sir Robert Fowler , member of parliament and Lord Mayor of London, and his wife Sarah Charlotte Fowler, née Fox. Elfreda was one of eleven children. She received her advanced education at Westfield College and then at the University of Oxford where she studied modern languages.
Go to Profile#888
Lydia Shattuck
1822 - 1889 (67 years)
Lydia White Shattuck was an American botanist, naturalist, chemist, and professor at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary . Early life and education Shattuck was born in 1822 in East Landoff , New Hampshire to first cousins Betsey Fletcher and Timothy Shattuck, and she was the only one of their first five children to survive past infancy. When she was a young girl, her mother would take her on excursions through the woods, which inspired a love of nature, particularly wildflowers.
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Winifred Lamb
1894 - 1963 (69 years)
Winifred Lamb was a British archaeologist, art historian, and museum curator who specialised in Greek, Roman, and Anatolian cultures and artefacts. The bulk of her career was spent as the honorary keeper of Greek antiquities at the University of Cambridge's Fitzwilliam Museum from 1920 to 1958, and the Fitzwilliam Museum states that she was a "generous benefactor ... raising the profile of the collections through groundbreaking research, acquisitions and publications."
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Jane Bancroft Robinson
1847 - 1932 (85 years)
Jane Marie Bancroft Robinson was an author and educator. Early life and education Jane Marie Bancroft was born in West Stockbridge, Massachusetts, on December 24, 1847. She descended on her mother's side, Caroline J. Orton, from an old Dutch family of New York City, and on her father's side from early English settlers in New Jersey. Her father, Rev. George C. Bancroft, was for over fifty years a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
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Maria Brace Kimball
1852 - 1933 (81 years)
Maria Brace Kimball was an American elocutionist who taught, lectured, and wrote on the subject. She was an instructor in elocution and lecturer on dramatic literature in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts; lecturer on French theatre and dramatic literature in schools; teacher of elocution in Brearley School, New York City, 1883–92. She was the author of A Text Book of Elocution and A Soldier-doctor of our army, James P. Kimball , as well as various contributions to periodicals.
Go to Profile#892
Kate Everest Levi
1859 - 1938 (79 years)
Kate Asaphine Everest Levi was an American educator, writer, and social worker. She was the first director of Kingsley House in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a settlement house, and the first woman Ph.D. recipient from the University of Wisconsin. Although both Syracuse University and the College of Wooster had granted doctorates in history to women in the 1880s, Everest Levi is considered the first woman to receive a Ph.D. in history from an organized graduate school in the United States. She wrote on topics such as education and German immigration to the Midwest.
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Myrtle Smith Livingston
1902 - 1974 (72 years)
Myrtle Smith Livingston was an American educator and playwright. Early life Myrtle Athleen Smith was born in Holly Grove, Arkansas, in 1902, the daughter of Isaac Samuel Smith and Lulu C. Hall Smith. She graduated from high school in 1920. She studied pharmacy at Howard University for two years , and earned a Colorado teaching certificate in 1924. She later earned a master's degree in 1940, from Columbia University.
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Delia E. Wilder Carson
1833 - 1917 (84 years)
Delia E. Wilder Carson was an American educator from the U.S. state of New York. She taught mathematics, and served as preceptress of Ladies' Hall, at the University of Wisconsin . Early years and education Wilder was born in Athens, New York, January 25, 1833. Her father, Thomas Wilder, was one of eight brothers who migrated from Massachusetts when the eldest was a young man. Several were teachers, and all were closely identified with the development and progress of Genesee and Wyoming counties, New York, where they ultimately settled. Her mother's maiden name was Hannah Dow . Her siblings included: Henry Fayette Wilder, Sarah D.
Go to Profile#895
Caroline Beaumont Zachry
1894 - 1945 (51 years)
Caroline Beaumont Zachry was an educational psychologist born in New York City to James Greer Zachry and Elise Clarkson Thompson. Her maternal grandfather was Hugh Smith Thompson the Governor of South Carolina from 1882 to 1886.
Go to Profile#896
Leila Cook Barber
1903 - 1984 (81 years)
Leila Cook Barber was an American art historian and professor, specializing in the Renaissance art and Medieval studies. She was a Professor Emeritus at Vassar College, where she taught from 1931 until 1968.
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Edith Clara Batho
1895 - 1986 (91 years)
Dr. Edith Clara Batho was Principal of Royal Holloway College, University of London from 1945 to 1962. Education She was educated at Highbury Hill High School, now Highbury Fields School in Islington, London. She then went on to University College, London and graduated in English in 1915.
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Stella Kramrisch
1896 - 1993 (97 years)
Stella Kramrisch was an American pioneering art historian and curator who was the leading specialist on Indian art for most of the 20th century. Her scholarship remains a benchmark to this day. She researched and taught Indian art history for more than six decades on three continents. After writing her dissertation on the essence of early-buddhist sculpture in India, she was invited to teach at Kala Bhavana in Shantiniketan and went on to teach at Calcutta University from 1924 to 1950. In Europe, Kramrisch worked at the Courtauld Institute, London . From 1950, she was professor at the Univer...
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Maria Montessori
1870 - 1952 (82 years)
Maria Tecla Artemisia Montessori was an Italian physician and educator best known for her philosophy of education and her writing on scientific pedagogy. At an early age, Montessori enrolled in classes at an all-boys technical school, with hopes of becoming an engineer. She soon had a change of heart and began medical school at the Sapienza University of Rome, becoming one of the first women to attend medical school in Italy; she graduated with honors in 1896. Her educational method is in use today in many public and private schools globally.
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Gabriela Mistral
1889 - 1957 (68 years)
Lucila Godoy Alcayaga , known by her pseudonym Gabriela Mistral , was a Chilean poet-diplomat, educator, and Catholic. She was a member of the Secular Franciscan Order or Third Franciscan order.She was the first Latin American author to receive a Nobel Prize in Literature in 1945, "for her lyric poetry which, inspired by powerful emotions, has made her name a symbol of the idealistic aspirations of the entire Latin American world". Some central themes in her poems are nature, betrayal, love, a mother's love, sorrow and recovery, travel, and Latin American identity as formed from a mixture of Native American and European influences.
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