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 female people in Education,
#901
Lilian Wyckoff Johnson
1864 - 1956 (92 years)
Lilian Wyckoff Johnson was an American teacher of history and an advocate for rural reform and civil rights. She was born in Memphis, Tennessee to John Cumming Johnson and Elizabeth Fisher. Both of her parents valued education and were strong proponents of community service. Her mother headed up the Memphis Women's Christian Association and was the first president of the Women's Christian Temperance Union. After an early education in private schools, in 1878 Lilian was sent to Dayton, Ohio to take refuge during a yellow fever outbreak; while there, she attended the Cooper Academy. Her parents...
Go to Profile#902
Harriet Newell Haskell
1835 - 1907 (72 years)
Harriet Newell Haskell was an American educator and school administrator from the U.S. state of Maine. She taught from 1855 to 1860 in Waldoboro, Maine and Boston, Massachusetts. From 1860 to 1868, she was a teacher and principal at Castleton Collegiate Seminary, Vermont. Thereafter, for 39 years, she served as principal at Monticello Seminary of Godfrey, Illinois.
Go to Profile#903
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#904
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#905
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#906
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#907
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#908
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#909
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#910
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#911
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#912
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.
Go to Profile#913
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#914
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#915
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#916
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#917
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#918
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#919
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#920
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#921
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#922
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#923
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...
Go to Profile#924
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.
Go to Profile#925
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#926
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#927
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#928
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.
Go to Profile#929
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."
Go to Profile#930
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.
Go to Profile#931
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#932
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.
Go to Profile#933
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.
Go to Profile#934
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#935
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.
Go to Profile#936
Hannah Keziah Clapp
1824 - 1908 (84 years)
Hannah Keziah Clapp was a teacher, activist and feminist in Nevada, US. She organized the state's first private school and was co-founder of the state's first kindergarten. She served as principal of the Lansing Female Seminary; taught at Michigan Female College; and was the first instructor and librarian at the University of Nevada, Reno. Clapp co-founded Reno's 20th Century Club, which in 1983 was added to the National Register of Historic Places listings in Washoe County, Nevada. She was born in Albany, New York in 1824, and arrived in Carson City in 1860, where she established the Sierra Seminary.
Go to Profile#937
Queena Mario
1896 - 1951 (55 years)
Queena Marian Tillotson , known professionally as Queena Mario, was an American soprano opera singer, newspaper columnist, voice teacher, and fiction writer. Early life Queena Marian Tillotson was born in Akron, Ohio, the daughter of James Knox Tillotson and Rose Tillotson. Queena was raised in Plainfield, New Jersey, where she graduated from Plainfield High School. She studied voice with Marcella Sembrich, who advised her name change. She paid for voice lessons by writing newspaper advice columns under the name Florence Bryant, including childrearing advice; "You know a lot when you're 16, y...
Go to Profile#938
Lucy Langdon Wilson
1864 - 1937 (73 years)
Lucy Langdon Wilson was an American educator and ethnographer who became widely known for her models of progressive education and for using laboratory methods to teach natural science to young school children. She was also a published ethnographer.
Go to Profile#939
Olive Cowell
1887 - 1984 (97 years)
Olive Thompson Cowell was a patron of the arts and music, and a professor of International Relations. Career Cowell graduated from Barnard College in 1910. She taught in high schools for several years before becoming professor at San Francisco State University. She went on to found the International Relations department as part of the Government program at San Francisco State University in 1927, the first International Relations department in the USA. She taught at the university until 1956.
Go to Profile#940
Rose Zeller
1891 - 1975 (84 years)
Rose Margaret Zeller was a New Zealand artist. Biography Zeller was born at the family home at 325 Cashel Street, Christchurch, New Zealand, where she lived until her death. Her parents were Hubert Andrew Zeller and Sarah Ann Zeller, who had arrived in New Zealand from London in 1890.
Go to Profile#941
Miriam E. Carey
1858 - 1937 (79 years)
Miriam Eliza Carey was an American librarian who helped establish the first libraries in prisons and hospitals in Iowa and Minnesota. Education and career Carey studied at Rockford Seminary , Oberlin College, Ohio and the library school of the University of Illinois, .
Go to Profile#942
Ora Brown Stokes Perry
1882 - 1957 (75 years)
Ora Brown Stokes Perry was an American educator, probation officer, temperance worker, suffragist, and clubwoman based in Richmond, Virginia. Early life Ora E. Brown was born in Chesterfield County, Virginia, the daughter of Rev. James E. Brown and Olivia Knight Quarles Brown. She trained as a teacher at Virginia Normal and Collegiate Institute, graduating in 1900. She also studied at Hartshorn Memorial College and the University of Chicago. In 1917, she was refused admission to the newly organized Richmond School of Social Economy because of her race.
Go to Profile#943
Myra Carroll Winkler
1880 - 1963 (83 years)
Myra Carroll Winkler was an American educator and was the first woman to hold elected office in El Paso County. Biography Winkler was born in Corsicana, Texas and her father, Clinton M. Winkler, was one of the first judges on the Texas State Court of Appeals. Winkler's mother, A.V. Winkler, was active in collecting Confederate artifacts. Winkler attended and graduated from the Sam Houston Teacher's College, and moved to El Paso, Texas in 1902. In El Paso, Winkler taught at several El Paso public schools, including El Paso High School.
Go to Profile#944
Marika Cifor
Marika Cifor is an American archivist and feminist academic known for her work in archival science, library science, and digital studies. Her research focuses on community archives, HIV/AIDS, affect theory, and approaches to archival practice rooted in social justice. She is an assistant professor at the University of Washington Information School. She also holds an adjunct faculty appointment in UW's Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies department.
Go to Profile#945
Esther Baker Steele
1835 - 1911 (76 years)
Esther Baker Steele was an American educator, author, editor, and philanthropist of the long nineteenth century. She aided her husband, Dr. J. Dorman Steele in his fourteen-week Barnes' Brief Histories series of books, these publications being, Brief History of the United States, 1871; France, 1875; Centenary History of United States, 1875; Ancient Peoples, 1881; Mediaeval and Modern Peoples, 1883; General History, 1883; Greece, with Selected Readings, 1884; Rome, with Selected Readings, 1885; and Revised United States, 1885. She did most of the work upon Brief History of the United States, which proved a phenomenal success.
Go to Profile#946
Liane Haid
1895 - 2000 (105 years)
Juliane "Liane" Haid was an Austrian actress and singer. She has often been referred to as Austria's first movie star. Biography Juliane Haid was born in Vienna on 16 August 1895, the first child to Georg Haid and Juliane Haid . She had two younger sisters, Grit, who also became an actress, and Johanna .
Go to Profile#947
Helen Louise Babcock
1867 - 1929 (62 years)
Helen Louise B. Babcock was an American educator, elocutionist, and dramatic reader. Early years and education Helen Louise Bailey was born in Galva, Illinois. August 13, 1867. She early displayed a marked talent for elocution and on reaching woman's estate she decided to make dramatic reading her profession. With that aim she became a pupil in the Cumnock School of Oratory of the Northwestern University, and, being an earnest student, she was graduated with the highest honors.
Go to Profile#948
Sophia D. Stoddard
1820 - 1891 (71 years)
Sarah D. Stoddard was an American educator who served as the fourth president of Mount Holyoke College from 1865 to 1867. She graduated from Mount Holyoke in 1841 and taught there for eight years before becoming Head.
Go to Profile#949
Lindsay Errington
1900 - Present (126 years)
Lindsay Margaret Errington is a Scottish art historian and former keeper for over 20 years at the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, where she worked to establish a representative collection of Scottish art.
Go to Profile#950
Marion Walker Spidle
1897 - 1983 (86 years)
Marion Walker Spidle was an American educator. She was inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame. Biography Born on July 18, 1897, to parents Letford William Walker and Georgeina Young Walker, in Jersey City, New Jersey. Spidle attended public schools in New Jersey and in Tennessee, and later graduating from the University of Montevallo in 1916. She also gained a B.S. and M.A. from Columbia University, and completed Graduate Studies at the University of Oregon. Spidle worked for the Alabama Polytechnic Institute from 1928 until it became Auburn University in 1960. She worked for Auburn, from 1960 until retiring in 1966.
Go to Profile